


Razorblade Rain

by Exstarsis



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/strange fake
Genre: Angst, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Dark, F/M, Original Character(s), Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Rough Sex, Salem, Sex, Yandere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-01 02:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exstarsis/pseuds/Exstarsis
Summary: After the Temple of Time, Chaldea sought and found another Master on its staff to aid Ritsuka. But Kaiya Hisau is a self-destructive, traumatized drunk. After she summons Arjuna, the only Servant ever banished from Chaldea for mysterious reasons, tensions begin to rise. Kaiya must now find a way to reconcile her internal demons with the demon watching every step she takes.
Relationships: Arjuna | Archer/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	1. A Walk In The Woods

The afternoon sun sparkled through the leaves of the summer forest, dappling the ground with bright spots. Birds chirped and whistled overhead, warning each other of the pack of two-legged invaders below. White butterflies danced in a stray sunbeam, and Kaiya Hisau, Chaldea’s newest Master, watched in a distant, numb wonder. She’d been doing technical support in the Antarctic-based Chaldea for over two years and the Conservatory just couldn’t recreate the sense of fresh summer air, or the sheer unpredictability of the animal noises.

“I’m glad it’s so nice here,” said Ritsuka happily. “If you’re going to take over dealing with these little bubbles, it’s only right you get the rewards.” The teenage girl twirled in a sunbeam like she didn’t have a care in the world.

But ah! Why would she? She’d saved all of humanity from the Mage-King’s Incineration. Compared to that burden, giving some basic training to the likes of Kaiya would surely be a pleasant diversion.

Though she was only in her mid-twenties, Kaiya felt old and stiff looking at the younger girl’s energy. To have that resilience—! The kid had lost just as much as Kaiya, no, _more_, and yet she laughed as a white butterfly settled on her finger, holding it out to Mash’s holographic presence.

Kaiya couldn’t laugh like Ritsuka, or concentrate on her work like Ritsuka, or even make friends like Ritsuka. No, Kaiya couldn’t do much of anything useful these days. Except for this: she could, due to the growth of some personal parameters scanned by Da Vinci, take on the role of Chaldea’s Master as a decoy to draw both attention and threats away from humanity’s true savior.

The sunshine made Kaiya’s nose tickle, and she sneezed, and sneezed again, swearing. “Dammit! Damn sun! Gah, I hate it!”

Silence fell in the glade, and Kaiya realized both Mash and Ritsuka were staring at her in transparent concern.

Then Ritsuka burst out laughing again. “I’ll ask Dantés if he’ll work with you—eh?” Then, as Mash waved a worried but intangible hand at her, she said, “Oh, uh, never mind.” Her gaze slid sideways to the white-clad form keeping watch at the edge of the clearing. 

Several other Servants had accompanied them on this training mission, but the Archer Arjuna was Kaiya’s own personal Servant, as Mash had been Ritsuka’s. She’d summoned him less than 48 hours previously, after Acting Director da Vinci had explained the reasoning behind equipping her with her own living weapon.

_The control chamber’s lights had flickered as somewhere, a Servant—probably Gilgamesh—drew on a Noble Phantasm. Da Vinci hadn’t even glanced up as she said, “Summoning your own Servant will be the final step in unlocking your extremely latent Master potential. Once you’ve done so, you’ll have the Command Seals that would let you temporarily contract with and empower any of Chaldea’s Servant cohort or even any random wandering Servants met while working.”_

_“You mean like Ritsuka does,” said Kaiya, with a brittle enthusiasm._

_With a little laugh, da Vinci had said, “Not that you’ll need to do so, of course. We won’t be sending you anywhere like _that_ alone. But you won’t be a very convincing decoy without the Command Seals.”_

It was important to Kaiya that she be a convincing decoy—she didn’t feel like she was good for much else these days—and so now she was the Master of Arjuna, the mythical Hindu hero. He stood in the shadow of a big tree, his white outfit almost glowing in the shade. His dark hair curled over equally dark eyes that remained fixed on the depths of the forest. If he’d heard Ritsuka’s comment, he made no sign.

Kaiya was fairly sure he’d been one of the resident Servants of Chaldea at some point in the past two years. But at a later point he’d been released and not re-summoned in a manner that Kaiya, too wasted on basement hooch, had not _then_ noticed as being strange. Not then… but now, unpleasantly sober, this oddly fresh air tingling in her nose, she wondered again what lay between Arjuna and Ritsuka.

Whatever it was, it seemed like Arjuna, at least, didn’t recall it, but Kaiya had noticed the way Ritsuka’s eyes widened when the white form shimmered into existence in the summoning circle, and observed the swift looks passed between Ritsuka and da Vinci. Later, her hand still aching from the newly imprinted Command Seals, she’d made an unusual effort to get an answer from da Vinci.

_“Ah, you noticed that, did you?”_ _said da Vinci airily, when approached in the control room. “You certainly do notice things.”_

_Irritated, Kaiya said, “I hardly needed to be Holmes to notice Ritsuka looking worried.”_

_Holmes, eavesdropping shamelessly, said, “I did warn you, Acting Director. Kaiya Hisau’s upbringing has made her extremely sensitive to human body language.”_

_Kaiya glared at Holmes, displeased by both his evaluation and apparent access to details about her childhood Kaiya had made certain weren’t in any written records._

_Testily, da Vinci said, “And as I recall, you considered it a virtue at the time.”_

_Holmes laughed. “I still do, Acting Director.”_

_“Even with…?” da Vinci tilted her head toward where the newly summoned Archer waited on the other side of the room’s window. But Holmes only smiled without answering, and da Vinci sighed. “Kaiya, Arjuna is a hardworking and obedient Servant. Keep him away from Karna and don’t ask him too many personal questions, and you’ll be fine.”_

_“Was it something to do with Karna that got him released last time?” It was the nerves at her new position that made Kaiya persist. She didn’t care about her own safety, but she wanted to do this right for Ritsuka’s sake. Roman, who had been her friend before—_before_, would have wanted her to do this right._

_da Vinci hesitated, the tiny pause of somebody rearranging a truth so it’s not quite a lie. Kaiya knew it well. She was an expert at it herself these days. “It’s a matter of not invading privacy. But Arjuna’s rivalry with Karna is part of their myths. It doesn’t take a genius like me to see keeping them on different teams is a good idea.”_

_“Nicely done, not a yes _or_ a no,” Kaiya had said acidly, and then flushed, waiting for the expected reprimand._

_Instead da Vinci patted her on the shoulder. “Exactly so. You’ll be fine, Kaiya.”_

_“_Something’s coming,” called Robin Hood as he emerged into the clearing, interrupting Kaiya’s reverie. Arjuna had vanished as she’d been distracted by her own thoughts. She glanced around and found him a few paces behind her and to her right, in the position he’d consistently adopted since she’d summoned him. 

He met her gaze with the same cool stare he’d turned on her as he knelt in the summoning circle. He hadn’t said much so far except to acknowledge or clarify her instructions, but she didn’t need to hear the words to guess what he thought of her. She’d cleaned herself up for the big summoning day, enough that she’d pass inspection to most mortal eyes. 

But his gaze had immediately ripped all that away, revealing the quivering failure she was underneath. She’d had a long, breathless, despairing moment in which she’d expected him to reject the contract, reject _her_, and fade away again. 

(She’d warned da Vinci it might happen, and da Vinci had just patted her shoulder in that way she had when she was trying to be kind to people much less intelligent than herself. Roman would have understood. Roman would have—but that was going nowhere.)

But Arjuna hadn’t rejected her. He’d simply looked away, taking in the details of the Summoning chamber and the people who stood with her. Then, without a word, he’d stood and placed himself for the first time behind her and to the right.

“Werewolves,” reported Mash after getting an update from da Vinci. “A small pack.”

Ritsuka gave Kaiya a dazzling smile. “Just hang back and watch this time. Work on getting a sense of what Arjuna can do. Later you can experiment with giving him specific instructions.”

More than a little uneasy, Kaiya nodded, rubbing her hands on her arms at the sudden prickle of goosebumps. Ritsuka moved away to confer with Robin and Siegfried, and Kaiya sighed. Specific instructions. She had no idea where to even start with those.

“Master,” said Arjuna quietly. “If you can’t defend yourself, please wait with your back to this tree.” He indicated said tree with a graceful twist of his hand. “I will not require your… combat guidance, so please focus on other things. Perhaps you can observe Ritsuka.”

Then the werewolves poured into the clearing, yelping and howling for the blood of humans. Kaiya tried to watch Ritsuka, but if the girl did anything more than really energetic armchair quarterbacking, she missed it. Instead her gaze was unavoidably drawn to Arjuna, who stood a little away from the rest of the Servants and picked off werewolves with what seemed at first like uncanny precision. Then Kaiya realized that Robin Hood was just as precise, but while Robin’s shots were full of a graceful, flowing movement, his cloak rippling around him, Arjuna’s movements were far more efficient and he remained still, like a pillar of stone.

Once the fight was over, Arjuna glanced at her, met her eyes, and a shadow crossed his face. Suddenly her heart was pounding and her face burned as adrenaline burned through her. It was the first overt sign of his disapproval, and it made what Kaiya’s friend Tsubaki had always called her ‘madness’ flash upon her: that desire she always felt to throw a drink in the face of anybody looking down at her. The desire to _escalate_, just to see where the other person would stop. It had gotten her into a lot of trouble in high school, trouble her mother had resolved in unusually diplomatic ways. Kaiya had learned to manage it after, at least until the world had ended. 

It had only ever been a game, back then. Back when Tsubaki and Gretel and Zanzi had been alive, back before Lev had betrayed them and destroyed the world. Ritsuka and her Servants had brought back the world, but the lives lost in the explosion that had kicked off the apocalypse were gone for good. Tsubaki and Gretel and Zanzi had all been in the control room.

Now… now the madness was something else, and it was a game most of the resident Servants had been _always_ willing to play with her, until Ritsuka had asked them to stop. 

_“Sorry, squishy mortal,” Beowulf had boomed, embarrassingly loudly. “The little Master says Chaldean staffers are too precious to brawl with. So I will drink with you, but when you get _feisty_, that means it’s time for beddy-bye._

Kaiya had been drunk a _lot_ back in those days. It had been Roman who had pulled her out of that ditch, given her his friendship, his ear, and his shoulder. And then he’d…

_No._

Kaiya met Arjuna’s eyes defiantly as he approached her, but all he said was, “Did I perform to your satisfaction, Master?”

“Perfectly,” Kaiya said sourly. “Maybe if we’re lucky we can find something else to kill.”

Arjuna only raised an eyebrow, and once again stepped to stand behind her right shoulder.

“Don’t,” she added sharply. “You don’t have to stand there. Look at the rest of them.” She indicated the other Servants, drifting around Ritsuka in the wake of the battle like butterflies around a flower. “None of them follow Ritsuka like this. I don’t expect it of you.”

She realized he was closer than she’d thought when he said softly in her ear, “But I expect it of me, Master. Ritsuka’s many Servants have many jobs. I have one: to take care of you. Everything else is secondary.”

An irrational white hot rage swept over Kaiya. She turned to glare up into his dark eyes. “Who told you that? Who told you your job was to take care of me? I didn’t. Was it da Vinci? Holmes?”

Arjuna once again raised one perfect eyebrow. “I am your only Servant, Master. I know my duty.”

“Bullshit!” Kaiya shoved Arjuna in his white-garbed chest. “Taking care of me is _not_ your job. Your job is to get out there and do cool things. Show off. Make it so anybody trying to hurt Ritsuka comes for _me_ instead.”

A smile, dark and twisted, flashed across his face and was gone so quickly she thought she might have imagined it. “I’m not going to protect Ritsuka, my little Master. I’m going to protect you.”

“Son of a bitch!” muttered Kaiya. She glared around, looking for something, _anything_, to do so that she didn’t _escalate._ Ritsuka, talking cheerfully, was dividing up the Servants into pairs so they could scout the surrounding area for anomalies. 

Well, she and her unwanted babysitter made a pair, right? She’d go out and find some bad guys herself, and he could _protect her_. 

She stalked past Ritsuka and into the woods. “Hey, Ritsuka, there’s more of those wolf guys here, right? And, like, some source to this nano-Singularity? Let’s go fucking find it.” And without waiting for Ritsuka’s response, or indeed _any_ response, she pushed her way into the forest.

Arjuna followed her, silent save for the occasional twig crunching underfoot. She herself made no effort at all to walk quietly. She could imagine her mother’s eyes narrowing, nearly the only sign of emotion on her expressionless face, but Kaiya didn’t care. She’d come to terms with failing her mother at least a year ago, and right now there were furry nightmares to lure out.

Something snarled off to her left. Arjuna’s bow sang twice and the snarl ended abruptly. Kaiya didn’t look. She didn’t stop, either, even when Ritsuka called her name from distantly behind her. It wasn’t until Robin Hood dropped from a tree before her and gave her a friendly wave that she came to a halt.

“Heya, Kaiya,” said Robin. “Ritsuka’ll catch up soon. Let’s wait for her, yeah?”

A bow creaked behind Kaiya as Arjuna said, “Get out of her way, poacher.”

Robin stared past Kaiya at Arjuna, and then very obviously rolled his eyes. “It’s going to be like this, is it?” He stepped out of Kaiya’s way and gave a very elaborate bow, gesturing for her to continue on. “Have fun keeping her alive, Prince.”

Scowling, Kaiya stalked on. The animal trail she’d been unconsciously following widened ahead, turning to run alongside a stream. The trickle of water covered Arjuna’s footsteps behind her. Slowly, as nothing growled and she was able to imagine herself alone, as the fresh scent of the water filled her nose and the birdsong continued pleasantly, a little of the painfully-on-edge tension that had haunted her since Arjuna’s summoning lifted. But after around fifteen minutes, her feet began to hurt. She’d spent more than two years walking on smooth floors and exercising on machines. She stopped to run her hands through her ragged hair, wiping away beads of sweat, and to stretch her back with her hands on her hips.

As she did, she glanced over her shoulder, half-hoping Arjuna had evaporated. Instead, there he was, ruining her sense of solitude, watching her with that carefully blank expression that troubled her so much. She stared at him for a moment, trying to understand. Then her eyes widened as she realized _why_ exactly it bothered her. 

Once again a shadow darkened his eyes and she promptly whirled away to continue her march, at double-time now. She couldn’t run from him, but a little voice in her head urged for her to try. It was the voice of survival, a voice she was good at ignoring these days. Her mother would be _so_ disappointed. But it was the memory of her mother that had given her the answer.

For most of Kaiya’s childhood, her mother’s face had been similarly blank. But her mother had been a damaged woman, and the blankness had genuinely reflected her limited emotional capacity. Only her eyes had ever shown her real emotions; any smile she wore for the teachers and bureaucrats had been a mask.

But Arjuna wore a different mask: a mask that didn’t _ever_ smile, or show any other hint of humanity. People didn’t wear masks unless they had something to hide, and in his case that shadow in his eyes gave her an uncomfortable hint as to what it was.

The ground grew softer and the underbrush crept closer to the stream’s edge. The formerly pleasant rushing of the water began to worry her at how it covered her Servant’s footsteps and she veered into the forest again. As soon as she was under the canopy, she tripped over a tree root in her haste. She caught herself as her mother had trained her, and came up to Arjuna close behind her, holding his white-gloved hand out to assist her her to her feet. When she looked furtively into his face, no shadow lingered, only a polite concern she could almost believe.

“I’m fine,” she told him, just as more snarls emanated from the forest ahead and behind them. The werewolves that had been missing for the last twenty minutes had finally decided to put in an appearance.

He nodded. “Then stay down.”

She obeyed, keeping below his arrow line as he picked off each of the six werewolves in a blur of motion. The last one fell dead at Kaiya’s feet, killed not by an arrow but by a curved white knife that appeared in Arjuna’s hand just long enough to spatter warm blood across her cheek before disappearing again.

Breathing hard, Kaiya started to stand up, noticing that somehow Arjuna’s clothing was still unblemished. But Arjuna’s hand pressed down on her head, keeping her low as he raised his bow to target something higher in the trees.

“Hey, hey, hey, I just got here!” called Robin, appearing from the perfect camouflage of his cloak, perched on a tree branch. “Am I interrupting something?” He ran a jaded eye over Kaiya kneeling at Arjuna’s feet, and added, “Because if I’m not I thought you might want to know that Ritsuka found the heart of this place. It’s a village tavern. I think they’re about to start a drinking contest.” As Kaiya half stood up, he added, “Yeah, I figured that’d get your attention. Come on. I’ll show you where it is.”

Arjuna caught her chin as she rose, turning her head toward him. With his other hand, he wiped the spatters of blood from her face. She watched, wide-eyed, as the blood shimmered brightly on his glove for only a heartbeat before fading away to leave the fabric pristine, hiding all marks of what he’d done.

She met his eyes, where once again the shadow lurked. She could sense the cruel smile hiding under his expressionless mask. When he brushed his now-clean thumb over her cheek again, she shivered and jerked her chin away.

“Not coming?” said Robin from the tree. “I can tell Ritsuka you’re busy.”

“No,” said Kaiya, and her voice was steadier then she expected. “Right now a bar and Ritsuka’s company sounds just right.” Pulling away from Arjuna entirely, she turned and walked toward Robin and temporary oblivion of alcohol.


	2. Downward Descent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who aren't geniuses with names, Kaiya is, in this timeline the daughter of Kiritsugu and his assistant Maiya from Fate/Zero, raised alone by Maiya. Her twisted relationship with her mother is just as much a part of this story as her relationship with Arjuna and Chaldea itself.

Kaiya stepped into the cool darkness from the overheated, boisterous tavern in the werewolf-and-catgirl village that Ritsuka had discovered. Within the tavern, Martha, Elizabeth Bathory and Penthesilea were still in the process of drinking the toughest the village had to offer under the table.

It was, apparently, the peaceful way to resolve the micro-singularity, and Ritsuka liked peaceful solutions. It had been explained to Kaiya in a kind of expert shorthand she couldn’t really follow, especially after she’d started tossing back the village’s mushroom ale. The general gist, though, was that if the Servants could outdrink the werewolves, they’d give up their whatsit of power and allow their closed world to dissolve back into the real one. But if the werewolves won, Ritsuka would have to stay _forever_, as… a power source or something?

There wasn’t really much risk of the Servants losing—Martha was in there—nor of Kaiya contributing to the victory at all. She was only human. But she drank along with the rest because the earthy ale was just like other beer in that it made her tongue tingle and her mind lose its grip on all the gathered sorrows she couldn’t otherwise stop clutching.

It had been enjoyable enough at first. She was familiar with Martha’s idiosyncratic approach to outdrinking everybody else. But after a time Kaiya had realized that while the some of the Servants were doing Ritsuka’s work, Siegfried and Nursery Rhyme had abstained from the fun and games to keep watch over the crowd. And Robin Hood and Arjuna had both remained outside, to keep watch for potential ambushes. A nagging sense of responsibility had unexpectedly attacked her, speaking in Doctor Roman’s voice. How could she protect Ritsuka, with her joyful eyes and glasses of milk, if she was trashed out of her mind?

The cool breeze carried the green scent of the forest to her past the woodsmoke and sweat lingering in her nose. She wandered off to an outhouse and once she emerged, lingered between the two buildings to look up at the glittering stars. It was a close facsimile of the sky above Chaldea, but she saw that so rarely that she’d forgotten how cold and pure starlight could be. “Tiny beacons of hope in a vast sunless sea,” her friend Zanzi had said one clear night a few years ago, and the memory made Kaiya smile even as her eyes burned.

As she looked down, blinking back tears, her smile lingering, her attention was drawn to her more immediate surroundings. No matter what hope they inspired, the stars didn’t do much in terms of illumination, and the blocks of light from the thrown-wide shutters on the tavern created yet deeper shadows between them. And _there_—something moved at the terminator of light and dark.

Her smile fading, Kaiya squinted at the light instinctively, trying to discern what she’d missed. Behind her, something growled, while to her left, toward the forest, a footfall scuffed in a ripple of umbra.

“Oh,” she said, and her bleary, cautious shuffle metamorphosed into a stretch as adrenaline released bubbles of light in her mind. She suddenly felt so loose her hands trembled at her side. When she inhaled, she felt _alive._

In a confidential whisper, like sharing a secret with a friend, she said to the shadows, “Well, come on then.”

“Hey there, missy,” said a low voice off to her side. “Remember what your little boss-lady said?”

_“Let’s all be nice to each other,” said Ritsuka, cheerfully inspecting her troops and the gathered villagers, forgetting that one among her ‘each other’ was only human. Not Ritsuka, not a Servant. To these werewolves, prey. _

_Me. _

_That’s all right._

“Come on, time for you to be nice to us.” rumbled a voice from her other side. “We’ve got a nice little house we want you to be nice to us in.”

She thought there might be as many as six, all around her. The werewolves were faster than her, generally speaking. She’d use that against them. She’d have to watch for ground hazards, though.

_Try talking first_, suggested a small part of her brain, as something else she could do here. _Screaming. Running._ But alcohol was very good at muffling that voice, and none of those acts made her feel so light and free and in control as she did while fighting for her life.

She estimated she wouldn’t have to bring down more than two or three before the rest would retreat. They’d tattle to Ritsuka that she hadn’t been _nice_, but Ritsuka wasn’t an idiot. She’d work it out.

“All right, boys,” said one of the werewolves, and Kaiya’s mother’s teachings took over.

_She can’t just move. She has to _dance_. Her feet aren’t just transportation, they’re weapons in their own right. Her feet can change the world, at least from the point of view of the head she kicks._

_One of them lunges for her from nearly behind, but she sees it because she’s light, loose, transparent, a ghost and she catches his wrist with a sidestep and then—_

And then the werewolf was yanked away from her as Arjuna, her Servant, her _protector, _got involved, and the glowing brightness filling her drained away.

He appeared as a silhouette in front of one of the windows, and Kaiya didn’t know if he’d materialized or been in the shadows all along. It didn’t matter, though. He was fast enough that none of the five werewolves had a chance to run away before they were groaning on the ground. Kaiya watched dully, her arms around herself, the effervescent bubbling of her spirit once again lead and ashes. 

He paused to confirm each werewolf still lived before checking on Kaiya. She hadn’t moved from where she’d frozen when he appeared. Why bother? She trusted him to save her.

In a voice tinged with amusement, Arjuna said, “So you _can_ defend yourself.”

That woke her from her reverie. She gave him a black look as she turned to return to the tavern. “Not really. Not unless I have to.” 

Back in the tavern, she joined the drinking contest again, all thoughts of acting _responsible_ shattered. She lasted through Liz’s impromptu tabletop singing routine and cheered when Robin Hood hauled her out. At one point she remembered shaking off Nursery Rhyme’s small, concerned hand. While her vision darkened at the edges and she started having trouble focusing, she was feeling pretty good about staring Pen and some asshole werewolf straight in the eye. And then, once again, Arjuna _had_ to step in and ruin things.

His arms closed around her shoulders from behind as he said calmly, “Master. Time to stop.” Long fingers closed over her mug and took it from her, and then he lifted her bodily away from the table she’d been leaning on. Somehow she knew his voice perfectly even though the faces swaying around her seemed distorted and alien. And she was _angry_ at him… wasn’t she? Wait…

Where was she again? Oh right. Drinking with werewolves. Awful, nasty werewolves. So much faster than men. _Sometimes you can’t meet in the middle, Ritsuka. Sometimes the middle is already too far into their territory._

Her feet could change the world but right now they were dangling as somebody held her securely against a warm, masculine chest. Very white. Wearing something so very white.

“Arjuna?” She sounded pathetic, which was fine because she _was_ pathetic.

“Yes, Master,” he said softly. “I’m here.”

She pressed her face against the heavy silk covering his shoulder. “I hate it here, Arjuna. I hate these people. I want to go home.”

Cool wind touched brushed her skin as the light and noise of the tavern faded. Arjuna said, “Soon.”

Kaiya tried to think, and realized why she couldn’t. “Put me down. I gotta go throw up.”

This she took care of near the village’s treeline, and to her inebriated astonishment, Arjuna not only held her hair back from her face with gentle hands, but handed her a wooden cup of sweet water from the village well to wash out her mouth and rehydrate her. 

It was like being with one of her friends. Her poor friends, all dead. Tsubaki, Gretel and Zanzi, and Roman, too. They’d made her laugh, accepted her quirks, understood a little more than most about where she came from. They gave her hugs whenever she needed them, too. 

Arjuna probably didn’t want to be her friend. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Hey, Arjuna,” Kaiya said, climbing to her feet and being careful to enunciate her words so she didn’t seem too drunk. “Gimme a hug.”

The tall Archer looked down at her a long moment, and then patted her on the head, his fingers combing lightly through her hair.

Kaiya’s mouth pushed out in a pout. She remembered hazily when he’d swept her up in his arms earlier to bring her out of the bar the second time. That had been like a hug, but not enough.

“Come on. A hug. You know, a hug?” She waved her arms at him. “Is it because I’m smelly? I mean, I don’t smell anything. I mean… _anything_. I think my nose is numb. But maybe I’m smelly?”

A faint, almost gentle smile flickered across his face, like a kind big brother denying a childish sibling. “You’re drunk, Master. Be content with a head pat.”

But Kaiya wasn’t. “Hrmph. Ritsuka’s surrounded by Servants who hug her. But I get you. _You_. Or maybe _you_ get _me_.” She thought for a moment. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Bet you’d rather go back to hugging Ritsuka.” That was when she recalled that Ritsuka was close to Karna, Arjuna’s mythological rival.

Too late, too late. Arjuna’s smile had been replaced by a tight, forbidding slash, and lightning seemed to flash in his eyes. “I _never touched_ Ritsuka.” 

For a moment they stared at each other, shock chasing away Kaiya’s drunken affability. She’d been _sure_ Arjuna hadn’t remembered his previous summoning.

His eyes widened and then narrowed as they met her own. His mask had slipped, and they both knew it. The set of his shoulders changed, reminding her of a panther on the verge of leaping on prey. 

The whole point of alcohol was that it made her reckless and brave and, okay, stupid. He said he hadn’t ever touched Ritsuka but he’d picked Kaiya up, held her hair back, patted her head. Her heart pounded. How dangerous _was_ Arjuna to his Master? She could find out…

Very firmly, she said, “Then give me a hug.”

As she’d half-intended, a red light flashed from her left hand as one of the three Command Spells inscribed there was temporarily consumed. As soon as it did, she felt dirty and ashamed. God. Nobody should be Commanded to touch her, especially not to indulge her twisted coping mechanisms.

But he did. His posture tightened as the Command Spell hit him. Slowly he raised one hand and tucked her hair behind her ear. He’d removed his gloves, she realized, feeling almost sick with fascinated dread. When had he done that?

Then his hand in her hair twisted sharply, stinging her scalp, and he was pressing her face to his chest as his other arm encircled her torso. Although she couldn’t smell anything else, she could, it turned out, smell him, at least at this range. His spicy scent surrounded her, as did his warmth and strength.

And it was the least comforting hug she’d ever had. His fingers traced her spine as his nose brushed through her hair, and the sharpness of his nails made her think of his white knife. She spent the entire embrace expecting that knife in the back, and she wouldn’t even have blamed him. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and combined with his scent to leave her more than a little turned on.

When he finally released her, his face was once again cold and blank. She felt so relieved to be alive that she swayed and her knees buckled. He caught her elbow and brought her back to her feet. His fingers bit into her skin, and she _loved_ it. The bright floating feeling bubbled through her, making everything beautiful, exacerbated by the lingering effects of alcohol.

“I’ve found an empty cottage you can sleep in. Would you like more water before we go there?” His eyes narrowed as she grinned up at him. “What are you laughing at?”

She put her fingers to her mouth, feeling the way it curved. “Nothing! Was that _really_ a hug?”

His fingers tightened further and he gave her a little shake. She’d have bruises as soon as he released her, and she’d be cursing herself later. But right now they reminded her she was alive, and that was _wonderful_.

“If it wasn’t what you had in mind, you have only yourself to blame. Do you want more water, Master?” 

_Only myself to blame. _This struck her as so true that it punctured a black hole in the floating mood. All the effervescent bubbles of light in her mind popped and she plummeted back into the wastes of despair and guilt and shame. “You’re right. You’re _so right_. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m so awful. I just wanted to see… to see how scary you were.”

He released her elbow and scooped her off her feet, boosting her up to his eye level. His expression was dark and unfriendly. “It’s very convenient that you’re so drunk you can’t even walk straight, Master. If you’re lucky, you won’t remember any of this tomorrow morning.” Then he began to move off toward one of the cottages.

Kaiya tried to process this. But all she could manage was, “Does that mean no more water?”

He didn’t bother answering her, and she slumped against his shoulder until he stepped through an open cottage door and put her on her feet again in front of a primitive bed. He gave her a shove toward it. She could smell blood from somewhere: not the deep, cloying scent that settled in a room where violent death had happened, but the brighter tang that predators could read in the wind.

“Where—?” she began, turning back toward Arjuna. But the Archer had vanished.

Then his voice came from the darkness near the open door. “Go to sleep, Master. I’ll fetch you when it’s time to rayshift back.”

Slowly, Kaiya sat down on the straw pallet, her thoughts increasingly befuddled. Something about the smell of blood struck her as strange. Something she ought to think about. But instead she curled up on her side, closed her eyes and let the world slip away.

* * *

She awoke to a gray light streaming through the open door and brightening the thatch, and remembered everything. Somebody had removed her shoes, and a white cloak lined with blue satin had been draped over her. It smelled like Arjuna, but it was Robin Hood who woke her.

“Hey,” said Robin gently. “Come on, wake up, Kaiya. Here’s some water for you.” He put a waterskin in her hand as she sat up and blinked blearily at him. Her head ached and her mouth felt like Fou had nested in it. Her throat was so dry that talking was impossible, so she guzzled half the water skin, spilling some of it down her chin.

“What…?” she finally asked, meeting Robin’s grave gaze as she wiped her mouth. “Where’s Arjuna?”

His mouth twisting wryly, Robin said, “Not quite sure. But we’ll be heading back soon. There’s not much more we can do here.”

Something about the way he said it made a chill run down Kaiya’s spine. “What happened? Did we win the drinking contest?”

“Oh yes. Martha, you know. “ Robin scratched his cheek. “But, ah, while Ritsuka and the others were having fun in the tavern, something slaughtered everyone else in the village. The people who were in the tavern are fine, but, ah… with such a small population now the Singularity’s going to wrap itself up in a matter of days instead of years now.” He shrugged, as if what he described was unfortunate, but not worth thinking about further. It was a very typical Servant attitude toward casualties.

Kaiya lowered her gaze, rubbing her head. She didn’t know how she felt about the news. Nothing about the brutish werewolves she’d met had struck her as worth mourning, but just hearing about a massacre brought up painful memories of the aftermath of Lev Lainur’s betrayal. 

No. Something was wrong. Despite her pounding head, she tried to figure out what it was. “But weren’t you on watch outside?”

“Yeah, I was. It was a dark night, though. No moon.” Robin Hood rose from his crouch. “How about we—”

“How were they killed?” demanded Kaiya, crumpling Arjuna’s cloak in her lap.

Robin rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Why make a fuss now? It’s too late for them.” Something hard glittered in his eyes for a moment and he added, “Probably whatever did it had a good reason.”

She frowned up at him, waiting for a real answer. After a moment, Robin swore softly, shoved his orange hair away from his face and crouched down again. “Slit throats. Except for five, who had something driven through their eyes.” He reached out to touch her left hand as it twisted in Arjuna’s cloak, stroking along the faded Command Seal she’d used the night before. “Ritsuka always says she has to report to da Vinci on how these get used. Do you have a story ready for her?”

Kaiya blinked at the question, and then shame swept over her as she remembered. “I made Arjuna hug me.” 

Robin whistled long and low. “Wow. That’s uh… well, damn. I guess you’re probably telling the truth.” His gaze went far away. “I wonder… nah. Never mind.”

From the open door, Arjuna said, “I hope you’re not disturbing my Master with strange stories, poacher.”

Rising to his feet again, Robin said, “Me? Nah. I never tell strange stories. Too much trouble. Get her over to the tavern soon, eh? Ritsuka wants to get back before something tries to take away that crystallized lore she’s hugging.”

Arjuna stepped inside to let Robin Hood stroll past him, and then came over to where Kaiya still sat on the bed. He held out an elegant gloved hand, ready to help her rise. “Master.”

Once again Kaiya felt like she had at the Summoning Circle, except this time her outside self properly reflected her inside self: straw in her tangled hair, reeking of beer and a hint of vomit _(oh God, had she really made Arjuna wrap her in his arms and press her against his chest?)_, with bloodshot, hollow eyes while her clothes were rumpled and damp with sweat. She was completely graceless compared to Arjuna. He would never see her as anything other than a cowering, cringing weakling.

She put his crumpled cloak in his outstretched hand and slid herself off the bed to stand. And then the whole point of the gesture disappeared as her shaky legs made her stumble. The cottage spun around her and her stomach churned unpleasantly. Then Arjuna took her elbow where he’d bruised her before and her breath hissed audibly between her teeth. The ache in her arm seemed to pound in time with the ache in her head.

“Ow,” she said helplessly as she tried to tug her arm away and avoid falling onto him at the same time. “That hurts. Please…”

His fingers loosened and then slid up her arm, the backs of his knuckles brushing against the side of her breast through her top. The brief contact combined with his scent made her suddenly extremely _aware_ of his physicality above and beyond his personal elegance.

“You had a bad night last night,” he said in a gentle voice. It was similar to how he’d spoken to her after she’d been ill. Similar, but not the same. This was the mask speaking, not the man underneath. She could see it in his cold eyes.

_If you’re lucky, you won’t remember any of this tomorrow morning._

Arjuna’s comment _(threat)_ from the night before bobbed to the surface. She _did_ remember, but until she’d decided what she wanted to do, she’d pretend otherwise. “I didn’t do anything too bad, did I?”

He paused, and then said, “No. Nothing too bad. Ready to go home, Master?”

Kaiya sighed. “Yes. Am I looking forward to the debriefing? No. Not at all. Let’s go.”

And hey, the advantage of being too hungover to walk straight was that Arjuna couldn’t get away with walking behind her like a retainer. Instead he walked beside her, letting her clutch his arm. 

Although Kaiya saw no bodies on her short journey, the village had become a ghost town compared to the day before. It was a micro-Singularity, a place that shouldn’t have existed. All those that lived there would have eventually merged back with whatever source they’d spawned from, whether it was human, magical creature, or something stranger. The lives lost here weren’t quite real, despite Ritsuka’s insistence on treating them as if they were. 

And thinking about how she’d seen the village yesterday, Kaiya though she understood. It hadn’t been a good place _(her skin crawled when she remembered how the residents had looked at her when she arrived)_ but it had been a community. How Ritsuka interacted with it had been a form of validation of her ideals, shaped and honed through the long Grand Order. Kaiya couldn’t have done the same, but that, likewise, was more about _her_ than the village itself.

At the mostly empty tavern, Ritsuka turned away from speaking to Robin and hurried over to Kaiya.

“Are you all right?” Ritsuka blurted, as Robin Hood facepalmed behind her. “Robin told me I accidentally made things very hard for you last night. Some mentor I am!”

Arjuna’s bicep flexed under Kaiya’s fingers as she said, “Ritsuka. I’m fine.” Sardonically she added, “I’m not defenseless. If anything bad happens to me, you can pretty much always trust that I asked for it.” 

Ritsuka gave her a curious look. “I don’t think that’s true. But I’m glad you’re not hurt. We’re getting the Rayshift set up now.” With a quick smile, she bounded off to talk to Martha and Liz.

Kaiya glanced up at Arjuna and saw how his eyes followed Ritsuka. She realized that Ritsuka had very purposefully avoided looking at or acknowledging the Archer. She hadn’t mentioned the massacre either, even though Kaiya was pretty sure it would have affected her strongly. Kaiya wondered what Arjuna would have said if she had.

Mash’s hologram flickered to life. “All right, everybody! Time to come home!”

* * *

The general debriefing with Holmes and da Vinci went all right. They let Kaiya sit in the corner of the conference room nursing a cup of coffee as Ritsuka gossiped (there was really no other word for it) about the mission with da Vinci. 

Nightingale the Berserker nurse had descended on Kaiya as soon as she emerged from the Rayshift chamber and forced her to ingest some foul concoction that had almost immediately cured her hangover. At least, it made her headache vanish and steadied her limbs. There were other after-effects of the night before that none of Nightingale’s medicines could touch, though.

Though Robin Hood and Nursery Rhyme joined the debriefing, Arjuna had escorted her to the conference room and then, after politely asking her permission, withdrawn. And yet even without him physically present, he dominated Kaiya’s thoughts. She kept feeling his arms around her in that terrifying, awkward hug, and hearing his whisper about how if she was lucky she’d forget.

“What do you know about what happened at the end, Kaiya?” said da Vinci, and Kaiya startled so badly that tepid coffee sloshed over her hand.

_She’d smelled blood in the cottage the night before._ “I was asleep, I think? And, uh, pretty drunk before that.” She gave a shrug that translated into a silent _sorry_.

Da Vinci gave her a thoughtful look. “Yes, that micro-Singularity was an unfortunate choice for training you.”

Holmes laughed. “Even I couldn’t have guessed that, though.” His laugh vanished and his eyes sharpened. “But Miss Hisau… tell me how your relationship with your Servant has been developing.”

Kaiya gave Holmes a hostile look. He was the sort of person she normally quite liked, except when he turned that keen intellect of his directly on her. He always seemed _present_ and focused on his surroundings in a way that da Vinci rarely managed. “Why don’t you tell me, sir?”

But all he did was smile and put his finger to his lips.

Da Vinci, watching the exchange, announced, “Everybody else, you can go. Kaiya, stay a moment.”

The Servants left immediately, but Ritsuka protested, “Even me? I want to—”

Kaiya interrupted to ask, “How well did you get along with Arjuna before, Ritsuka?”

Ritsuka’s face changed and a rare look of furtive guilt passed through her eyes. “Uh. He wanted me to stay away from him, and I tried to respect that. But Karna thought—” She stopped as if something occurred to her, and then shook her head. “You know what? I should go check in on… on everybody. Make sure nobody’s causing any trouble.”

“Good idea,” said da Vinci briskly. Once the door had closed behind Ritsuka, she turned her attention back to Kaiya, who felt like she was once again sitting in a school principal’s office waiting for her mother to show up and rescue her.

“Kaiya, would you tell us if you were having trouble with your Servant?”

“…Probably not, Acting Director.” Kaiya had noticed the hypothetical phrasing. It made her answer honestly, just to see where da Vinci would go next.

Da Vinci sighed. “I didn’t think so. That’s your choice, and a choice I trusted you with when I decided to promote you. However…” The gaze she swept over Kaiya was already distant with unimaginable calculations. “If you won’t seek out the help or advice of others, we cannot help you manage your Servant. He is your tool. What he does is your responsibility. And with such a powerful and unpredictable Servant, you must think carefully about everything you say to him. You cannot be casual with him. Do you understand?”

Kaiya didn’t answer. She felt like she was being asked to turn herself inside out. The only world she understood was one where she was the one reaching for _connection_ the way a seedling reached for the sun. To hold herself apart, to _demand_ he walk behind her, to _push him away_… she could never do it. Not even if he also desired it. 

She thought bitterly again of how Ritsuka was surrounded by Servants eager to hug her, talk to her, play with her. She’d bet good money that da Vinci had never told the younger Master to not be casual with her Servants. She’d seen just how playful da Vinci could be herself.

_I bet she never used a Command Spell to get a hug, either_, noted the voice of honesty inside. Kaiya winced and briefly wished she were dead. da Vinci was probably right. Too much close association with her would drive any Servant dangerously mad. Maybe it had already happened. Maybe… no. She’d think about that later.

As her gaze flew around the room, she realized Holmes was still gently smiling at her. Once again, he brought his finger to his lips, and then slowly winked. Kaiya had no idea what he meant, except that the context suggested he didn’t quite agree with what da Vinci was saying.

“Kaiya?” asked da Vinci. “You can also change your mind. We want to keep you with us. Don’t be stupid, all right?”

“Hah hah,” said Kaiya. “Yeah. Sure. Do you need anything else from me? If not, I would really like a shower.”

With a sigh, da Vinci leaned back in her chair, waving her hand. Kaiya didn’t wait for anything else, almost knocking over her chair in her haste to escape.

Arjuna didn’t appear as she jogged down the Chaldea corridors to her quarters, and she wondered if he was off picking a fight with Karna as Ritsuka had so clearly feared. But after carefully considering da Vinci’s lecture on responsibility, Kaiya concluded that her current priority was still that shower.

Soon she stood under steaming water, letting the spray wash away soap and sweat and scum from the mission. The hot water beat against her skin, making her flushed and lightheaded, but it had an invigorating effect on her mind. She could think just a little more clearly.

The massacre at the werewolf village. Robin Hood’s evasive behavior. The smell of blood near the mysteriously empty cottage where she’d spent the night. It was Arjuna who had killed the werewolves, and almost everybody knew it. And nobody was saying a word. Why not? Because of her? Because it was her responsibility? She could believe that of da Vinci. But Robin? Ritsuka? She _knew_ them. They were more likely to remain silent because they didn’t want Arjuna hurting her.

To hell with that!

She scrubbed her hair violently, her fingernails digging into her scalp. Then she rinsed herself clean one more time and forced herself to end the shower, because some things couldn’t be washed away. 

After she stepped out of the shower, toweled off and pulled on her bathrobe, she stopped before the small vanity mirror. Her black hair stood out in spikes around her head, in a way that had occasionally almost made her mother smile. She scowled at her reflection and smoothed down her hair, squinting at the shadows under her dark eyes. _Not great_. As for everything else… She’d inherited her pointy chin from her mother, but while it made her mother look sharp and tough, it only ever made Kaiya look foxy, a description she’d always hated. Well, so be it. She wasn’t winning any beauty contests. As long as she didn’t look completely ridiculous (_those spikes of hair) _as she confronted Arjuna, she’d be content.

Nerving herself, she stomped out of the bathroom and then stopped, arrested by the sudden scent of breakfast. Honeyed bacon. Toast made from EMIYA’s special cinnamon bread. The bright raspberry scent of Tamamo-cat’s jam. The low, soft smell of eggs scrambled with cream cheese. So many luxuries they’d gone without during the Grand Order, when they had to ration out supplies and scavenge from Singularities.

On the one-person table near the door rested a tray from the cafeteria containing several covered plates, along with tableware, napkins and a tall glass of orange juice. Arjuna sat in the sole chair, his legs stretched out and his hands in his pockets.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, a dark smile curved his lips—a true smile, if not a kind one. He stood up and with a slight bow said, “I brought you breakfast, Master. If you’d like to dress before you dine, I can turn my back.”

He was wearing his gloves again, Kaiya noticed. That solidified a resolve that the smell of bacon and toast had weakened, although she couldn’t say why. 

“Not yet,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I want to talk to you first.”

“Better not, Master,” he said softly. He lifted one of the plate covers and the gush of the warm scent of fried pork almost made Kaiya swoon.

Scowling, she joined Arjuna at the table and snatched up a piece of bacon, and then a piece of toast. His mouth curving politely again, the Archer gave her some space.

She didn’t sit down, though. After a few swallows had tamed the raging beast in her belly, she shook her head again. “I still want to talk to you.”

Arjuna lowered his gaze to the floor, tugging on the fingers of one glove. “All right. Let’s talk.” There was a purr under his words.

Kaiya took a deep breath, and then another one, and then drank some of the orange juice. It didn’t drown out the voice of survival that told her to _stop, _to _get out of this room_, to run to da Vinci and cry in her lap, to beg for help or restraining bolts or _anything_. But the voice of survival had been trained by her mother, who would never accept this _responsibility_ she’d taken on and who couldn’t tolerate the idea that she might sacrifice herself for others.

Nobody, not her mother or Ritsuka or da Vince could ever understand that if Arjuna wanted to kill her, at least she’d feel that those floating bubbles of light before she died.

“You killed all the werewolves.” Her voice, when she finally spoke, was flat.

Arjuna slowly finished tugging off the first glove, his eyes still down. Almost carelessly, he asked, “Why do you think that?”

“Because I’ve watched you. Because I remember everything from last night.” She waited breathlessly for his reaction.

He started working on the other glove without glancing up at her. “You wanted to know how _scary_ I was, so you compelled me to embrace you.”

Kaiya flinched. “Yes. I admitted it then. I’m not going to deny it now. I know it was awful and—”

Arjuna finished pulling off his other glove and cut her off as if he didn’t hear her. “Normally, I’d kill a Master who watched me as closely as you do, especially one who can’t keep their thoughts to themselves.” He finally glanced up and met her eyes. His own had a demon in them, one that pinned Kaiya in place. “But your stunt with the Command Seal has suggested a… different course of action. I’m willing to make a deal with you, my little Master.”

The door was behind Kaiya. All she had to do was fling it open and run. She had two Command Seals on her left hand still. Taking those into account, she could probably escape, at least until she found one of Ritsuka’s Servants to hide behind.

Instead she swallowed hard and said, “What kind of deal?”

He smiled, the demon completely revealed. “A very simple one. I will serve you absolutely on the battlefield, and under the eyes of others. But when you are alone, you are _mine_, to do with as I please.” He waved one long finger. “Be careful, master. If you refuse this deal, I’ll go back to my original plan. You’ll have to use those seals to destroy me before I destroy you.”

Kaiya scowled. “That’s revolting. I won’t be your dog.” She humiliated herself plenty. Doing it to prevent her Servant from killing her—well, she’d rather go out quickly on bubbles of light. After all, that was, in a way, why she’d signed up for this gig.

Arjuna chuckled. “No, my light. You’re going to be the lover of this hateful creature you’ve found. You will be subject to his… indiscreet tastes and twisted passions.”

_Lover…?_ But she was damned one way or another, so she _pushed._ “You mean _your_ indiscreet tastes and twisted passions?”

A look of rage and hatred wiped away his smile. “Agree quickly, Master, or ready your seals.”

For once the voice of survival and her main ego were in agreement, if only for the short term. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

The look of hatred intensified on his face. “So fearless, Master. If you’d had the sense to be afraid, I might have remembered I was born to be a hero. But never mind that now.” His final words were spoken in a guttural snarl, and then he surged forward.

Kaiya only had time to raise her left hand protectively. Then he caught it and wrenched it painfully behind her back as he spun her and pressed her to the wall. His thigh shoved between her legs as his long-fingered hand caught the side of her head, squeezing with vise-like strength.

“Mine, Master,” he whispered. “We’re alone, and right now you’re _mine_,”

Kaiya was breathing hard, and not just from the fear, pain and adrenaline that danced through her. The bubbles of light teased at the back of her mind, giving her a taste of the wild joy of a fight without taking over her mind. Arjuna’s thigh between her legs provided a rough pressure on her core that would have made her squirm for more if he wasn’t holding her so firmly.

He was a monster. She’d suspected it and now she knew. Ripples of pain throbbed through the arm he’d wrenched behind her back. His hand on her head felt like he could crack it open by squeezing a little more. And she desperately craved the touch of his monster’s hands across all her most sensitive parts.

As if in answer to her twisted longing, he released her arm and slid his hand around to the opening of her bathrobe. His hand was cool against her still-overheated skin as he ran his fingers over a nipple and then kneaded first one breast and then the other. The sensation elicited an unconscious gasp from her as her nerves sang under his touch. His touch was a sharp contrast to the last male hand that had touched her breasts: sweaty, fumbling, belonging to the drunken operator of one of Chaldea's supply pilots after the company holiday party. She didn't even remember his name now.

“Bountifully endowed, given how scrawny you are,” Arjuna murmured, and then bit her ear. His other hand released her head and went to her bathrobe’s tie, pulling it open. He tugged her robe off her shoulders until it was pooled at her feet and she was naked before him. 

She scarcely noticed, all her attention focused on the way his hand moved at her breasts. The slightest brush of his thumb across her hard nipple sent lightning down to her groin, while the casual kneading made her want to press herself into his hand. When he instead twisted hard, she bit her upper lip in response, aching to put her mouth on him somewhere and use her tongue and teeth on him as he used his fingers.

Then the fingers of his other hand slipped between her folds and she moaned at the pressure of his fingers tracing the extent of her slickness. He whispered, “So wet already. You’re as twisted as I am, being this wet for how I’m going to profane you.”

He used his own thigh to force her legs farther apart and a moment later a burning heat pressed across her core. Slowly he slid back and forth and Kaiya bit her lip so hard she tasted blood to avoid screaming with frustrated desire. Arjuna’s teeth grazed the back of her neck and his hand at her breasts continued its wicked work.

“But first, tell me how much I disgust you,” he told her. “I heard it in your voice before. Make me hate you more.”

“You’re a monster,” Kaiya gasped out. “Oh, god please don’t stop… you’re a liar, the legends about you are all wrong—ahh!”

As she spoke, Arjuna changed his angle and shoved himself inside her, penetrating her deeply.

The bubbles of joy completely suffused Kaiya. For long minutes all she was aware of was the clothed form of Arjuna moving against her back as each of his thrusts reached a spot inside her that seemed like the source of the joy. Her knees trembled and her toes curled as he kept going, going, slamming his flesh into hers, making her mewl helplessly. She couldn’t take it. It was too much. The rising waves of pleasure crashed through her, carrying away the remnants of her self-awareness.

When she came to herself again, Arjuna had laid her across the bed on her back and his dark, curly head was bent over her breasts. He had one of her nipples in his mouth, his tongue and teeth sending jolts down her spine. Once again desire curled through her belly, despite the languorousness making her limbs tremble. But the bubbles of joy had faded away and she felt dark and angry again.

She inhaled deeply and Arjuna lifted his head, his unholy smile more than a little self-satisfied. She didn’t like it. But he gave her only a brief glance before turning his attention to other breast.

As her breathing once again became panting, she searched wildly for something she could do to show him that, despite coming apart at his rough treatment, she wasn’t _his_. He’d removed his own clothing and so, squirming against his mouth, she reached out and dragged her fingernails hard across his back.

He lifted his head again and this time his expression was unfriendly. Feeling a little smug herself, Kaiya said, “Is this what you wanted to do to Ritsuka?”

Hate flickered across his face. He sat up and his fingernails traced down her cheek. “We’re both disgusting, aren’t we, Master? You just as much as me, with your little jealousy.”

“I’ve got nothing to be jealous of—” Kaiya’s protest was instinctive, and she closed her mouth as he laughed angrily.

“Let me taste those lying lips.” He stretched out on top of her and kissed her cruelly, his tongue reaching deep into her mouth and dominating her own. His fingers pulled her hair hard, and then harder as he broke the kiss and dragged her onto her stomach. The pain made her eyes tear up and brought forth another trickle of the bubbles of light. 

She _was_ as bad as him. She deserved this. And he owed it to her after all the unwanted _protecting_ he’d been doing. As he once again thrust himself into her, dragging his fingernails up her thighs and leaving inflamed scratches behind, she thought, _Yes. Yes. Yes. _When he bit her shoulder so hard she wailed, the bubbles of light suffused her and she became nothing but a beast of lust and pain, rising to an endless sky on currents of pleasure and satisfaction.

Yes. This. This was what she needed. And Arjuna, her Servant, so determined to serve, would provide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a challenge to write. Portraying smut and dark, violent smut at that is new for me. But it felt like the only way for the relationship between these characters to start.
> 
> Next time... well, I won't lie. There's going to be more sex.
> 
> In case you've wondered, yes, this is the same Nightingale from my other Chaldea fic, [The Star and the Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20963096), and it's happening relatively concurrently. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, and you'd like to read a somewhat sweeter take on a broken romance, check it out.


	3. Appreciation

Kaiya woke to Arjuna’s hand between her legs, a moan on her lips. She’d passed out after the fourth time he’d had sex with her and at first she thought this was a continuation of that. But no, that couldn’t be right. Arjuna’s leisurely stroking had aroused her out of a deep, long sleep. She could tell from the fog in her mind and the lethargy in her limbs.

His long fingers moved in and out of her, sliding easily in a way that made each touch sizzle through her body, interfering with her attempt to understand exactly what was going on. When his mouth brushed over her breast again, she bit her lip and whimpered.

“Awake?” he murmured against her soft skin, and she could feel the rumble of his chest against her arm.

Catching her breath as his fingers pushed deeper and her hips jerked pleasurably, she still managed to demand, “What… what the hell have you been doing to me while I slept?”

“Very little,” he said, and traced his tongue down the valley between her breasts. “But it’s time for you to wake up, Master. You never did eat much breakfast and I dislike the thought of you becoming even more scrawny.”

He withdrew his fingers from her and a surge of unconscious anger passed through her at the loss. Then he rolled onto her, settling himself between her legs, his cock nudging between her folds. He stayed like that a moment, looking down at her with an inscrutable expression. Irritably, she said, “This isn’t feeding me, you know.”

The demon flickered through his eyes and he lowered his mouth to her ear to whisper, “No. But you’ll enjoy it anyhow, won’t you?” Slowly, he pushed himself into her, and then just as slowly withdrew, the length of his shaft a maddening tease across her most sensitive regions. Then he did it again, and again, an unhurried motion that only amplified her need.

She squirmed against him, trying to push past this torment. Having him on top of her, her chest rubbing against his as he whispered in her ear was almost overwhelmingly erotic. He’d only taken her from behind that morning, even when he’d used his tongue. She’d thought it was a kink of his she’d have to get used to.

“If you dislike my body so much, why are you fucking me for the fifth time in a day?” she asked through gritted teeth, hoping once again to provoke him into more forceful attentions. But this time she failed.

“Because you’re mine,” he whispered against her ear as he lazily moved inside her. "My precious Master, all mine. And I want to make you scream.”

This made Kaiya press her lips tightly together. He’d succeeded in making her shriek a few times before without resorting to this infuriating slowness. She’d been so _pleased_ (for lack of a better word) earlier with his roughness; she’d felt like they’d finally understood each other. Now there was this bullshit.

“I could just stop instead,” he breathed, tickling her ear. “Leave you unsatisfied.”

“Go right ahead!” she told him angrily. “I’ll be just fine.”

He laughed. “Liar. I heard you whining earlier.” Then he was kissing her, his tongue pushing past her pressed lips and dominating her own like she’d let him in.

Kaiya gave up, unable to concentrate on anything other than the frantic signals of her body. She needed his stiff cock inside her, whether he went fast or slow. She needed his mouth and teeth, whether he was gentle or harsh. Her thighs ached but she moved under him anyhow, driving herself against him until she found a rhythm of her own in his long thrusts. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders. He lifted his head and bared his teeth at her, sweat glittering on his brow and mingling between their heated bodies.

She closed her eyes as her climax swept over her, as perfectly overwhelming as when he’d bitten her shoulder. Through the glaze of pleasure, she felt him stop moving and press his forehead against hers. “You see, my light? I’m not always so punishing a lover. How boring that would be.”

Then he was gone, leaving her trembling alone on the bed. As the bliss slowly faded from her nerves and the cool air dried her sweat, she began to shiver. She tried to roll on her side to curl into a ball, and groaned as the ache in her muscles overwhelmed the painkilling effect of endorphins. Quickly all the scratches and bites she’d accumulated in the last eight hours spoke up too, determined to have their say.

_Oh dear god. _What had she been _thinking_? What had she agreed to? How loud had she screamed? Would she ever walk again? She doubted it. Oh hell, if Nightingale saw her like this she’d try to _murder_ Arjuna. She should have run. She should have confided in da Vinci. She should have used the damn command seals to order Arjuna—

No. She shouldn’t have ordered him to hug her. She should have respected da Vinci’s advice. She should have left well enough alone. She could hear her mother lecturing in the back of her head. _Survive. Survive._ And then the memory of her mother brushed ghostly fingers through her hair. _You survived._

It was true. He hadn’t killed her, and she’d earned every ache and scratch and bruise. If she had to crawl through the next few days as a mass of welts, shoulders bowed under everybody’s knowing sneers, well, she deserved that too.

She felt around on the bed until she found a blanket and pulled it completely over herself, hiding away from everything. This was awful. _She_ was awful. No wonder he’d simply walked away after finishing with her.

Unexpectedly, the blanket was ripped away from her and Arjuna scooped her up to cradle her to his bare chest. She hunched further into her ball, blearily hoping he’d drop her. Instead he carried her across the room and into the bathroom. Opening one eye, she caught a glimpse of her appearance in the vanity mirror: a pale, wretched looking figure with bags under her eyes, streaks on her face, her black hair in ratty spikes, and red marks all over her skin.

Then he lowered her into a steaming bath and her mind temporarily short-circuited as the hot, lavender-scented water washed the unpleasant sting of pain. After only a moment, the pleasant shock of the hot water faded and the scratches and aches reasserted themselves—but in a subdued, chastened way. Fortified by this reminder of her bad decision-making, she half-opened her eyes.

Arjuna, once again dressed in that magically pristine outfit (save for gloves), knelt beside the bath, watching her patiently.

“Why am I in a bath?” she asked, without lifting any more of herself than required from the hot water.

“Because I decided you should take one, Master,” he said, so reasonably that she narrowed her eyes. Was this the same man who’d left bite marks all over the back of her thighs when he’d discovered how it made her pant and moan? She could still feel each little wound as she shifted her legs. They didn’t feel nearly as transcendent now as when he’d delivered them. More along the lines of _what was I thinking_, really.

Then he put his hand in the water, stroking up her calf, and she stopped wondering if he’d been replaced by a doppelgänger. Definitely still the same man. She could feel it in the movement of his hand, and see it in the demon flashing through his eyes.

“I usually take showers,” she informed him icily, and moved her calf away from his hand.

The demon smiled. “I’ve noticed.” Then Arjuna added, “But now you’re having a bath. I do hope the water is a pleasant temperature.”

“It’s fine,” she snapped. “Fine. Go away and I’ll take a bath.”

In response, he leaned forward, his mouth brushing her temple. “You’re still mine, Master. So I will wash you and tend to your marks.”

Kaiya sank down into the water up to her nose, eyeing him in dislike.

His head still bent over hers, he said softly, “And if you drown yourself, I’ll simply go to Yama’s kingdom and bring you back again. You might find that distressing, so I suggest you refrain.”

In response, she dunked herself under the water and rose up again. With her hair plastered to her scalp and those stupid spikes gone, she said with chilly dignity, “I would never drown myself. I fully intend on dying heroically for Ritsuka at some point.”

Anger sparked in Arjuna’s eyes, but all he said was, “What fantastical stories you tell yourself, Master.” Then he found some soap and began to wash her, starting with her toes.

She tried hard to remain stiff and unfriendly. But the sensation of his fingers gliding across her soapy skin made it a challenge. He stroked away aches that could be massaged away and gently touched the bruises that would last. As he approached the bites he’d left on her thighs, he lingered over the marks, a half-smile on his face. Looking at his expression and feeling the light touch of his fingers on her sensitive skin, desire curled at her core again.

He moved up her thighs to between her legs, where his businesslike approach did nothing to quench her growing sexual heat. When he shifted to her stomach, she rubbed her thighs together, biting her lip and then scowling at how relaxed her legs felt. His hands encircled her waist and pulled her forward before sliding up over her breasts. She gasped as he repositioned himself without releasing her, so he soaped her breasts from behind. While he hadn’t lingered down below, he took his time here, leaving Kaiya flushed and dizzy before he moved to washing her back and rubbing her shoulders and neck.

When she felt as limp and relaxed as a wet noodle, he let her lay back in the water again while he finger-combed her damp hair. Then he stood up and left the bathroom after first saying, “Remember what I said about drowning yourself.”

After he left, she splashed the door and shouted, “I said I’d never do that!” before sinking back in the tub up to her nose, brooding. She didn’t quite know what to do now. Though veiled by the boneless relaxation he’d induced with his strong fingers, a large part of her simmered with righteous wrath at Arjuna’s completely unnecessary assumption of responsibility. She neither wanted nor deserved this attentive care. He’d promised her _indiscreet tastes _and _twisted passions_, dammit. Did that conjure up the image of lavender-scented baths? No it did not.

She ran her fingers over her thigh, feeling once again the sting of the bite marks there. On the other hand, trying to reconcile he who had left these marks with he who had washed her back was making her feel decidedly off-balance. She couldn’t begin to predict what was going to happen next. After careful consideration, she decided to stay in the tub until some better option presented itself, like the water turning cold and nasty enough to fit her mood.

_Are you really going to just sit there feeling sorry for yourself?_ asked another voice from her memory, and she flinched. She’d never known her father in person. For most of her childhood she’d never even known his _name_. All she’d known is that her mother valued his happiness over her daughter knowing him and never scrupled to hide that, saying, _“He’s living a peaceful life now. I won’t have you disturbing that.”_

Eventually, once he’d died, her mother had opened up about him, at least enough to tell her his name and a few details. Kaiya had inherited her spiky hair from Kiritsugu Emiya, who had once been Maiya’s mentor and lover. And once she’d learned his name, it had become irrevocably attached to the imaginary father in her head that she’d played with as a child. She’d told bedtime stories to herself about him and his obviously heroic exploits. She’d pretended to hold his hand each time she had to do something scary without her mother. And he’d lectured her every time she’d tried to run away in a fit of selfish teenage angst, serving as both her conscience and her ability to laugh at herself.

“You’re not helpful right now,” she said out loud. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself, anyhow.”

_Of course not. It’s customary to plan to stay in the bath until your own sweat congeals on the water’s surface. Come on, you invited this on yourself every step of the way. Stand up and face it like a man._

“Hah. See, I don’t have to listen to you. You never even knew I existed, let alone what gender I am.” She sloshed the water back and forth with a foot and tried to figure out what _facing it like a man_ meant in this case. Not sulking over undeserved kindness was probably a good start. Maybe she could even take a stab at being properly grateful.

She practiced a few times. “Thank you. Thanks. You didn’t have to. You _really_ shouldn’t have.” All very generic sounding, and also utterly empty. What exactly was she being grateful for? _Thank you for getting me off five separate times, mostly in ways that also hurt. I loved the way you made me howl. When you were cruel, I didn’t completely hate myself._

No, she didn’t even deserve that, did she? She’d latched onto that escape like she’d clung to a bottle in the past: feeling uncomfortable, guilty, and yet utterly unable to let go of that dangerous and undeserved comfort. And yet…

And yet, what she did or didn’t deserve couldn’t lessen the obligation owed for another’s kindness. She’d been entirely unworthy of Dr. Roman’s friendship, but she would still protect Ritsuka for him because she owed him at least that much. She ought to approach Arjuna the same way.

Then the bathroom door opened and he walked in, a towel over his arm and hot food smells engulfing him. As he looked at her, his smug demon’s smile flashed across his handsome face. Instantly, Kaiya abandoned her plan to better appreciate him to snap, “What’s so funny?”

“Time to get out of the bath, Master. Can you stand or shall I lift you?”

Glowering, Kaiya rose, her body’s aches notably lessened. Arjuna held out a hand to help her step from the tub, which she accepted. But to her outrage, he followed this by toweling her hair, tucking the bath towel around her and picking her up _anyhow_.

She growled under her breath and started to resist before realizing that whatever his smile meant, he was once again aroused. The glitter in his eyes made her stop fighting instinctively, just so he’d press her against his body.

He carried her from the bathroom and deposited her in the chair at the table, in front of a new tray of food. As she adjusted the towel, annoyed at the return of the food motif, he began removing plate covers. Grilled cheese, soup, an apple and a paring knife, a glass of juice.

“Tamamo-cat prepared this meal especially for you,” Arjuna said softly. “I told her you’d appreciate it.”

With a wince, Kaiya asked, “What did she say?”

A slightly pained expression flickered across Arjuna’s face. “She said woof, Master. And that I ought to take my new puppy for more walks so you got along with people better.”

Kaiya relaxed and picked up the sandwich. “She’s a sweetheart and I do appreciate _her_.” She chewed and swallowed, keenly aware of Arjuna watching her, and tried to find that modicum of gratitude he probably deserved too. But every time she thought she’d grasped it, she’d meet his eyes and it would fade away in a flash of irritation. It would just be forced politeness right now, and it would probably annoy him as much as her.

Actually, when considered that way….

Nope. Nope. He’d just take it as encouragement.

“You’ve stopped eating, Master. Won’t you try the soup?”

Glaring, Kaiya stuffed the rest of the sandwich in her mouth first. Then, as soon as she could do so coherently, she told him, “I hate you.”

The demon smiled. “And yet unless you use those Command Seals, we’re partners, my light. Let me cut your apple.” He picked up the fruit and used his white knife rather than the one Tamamo-cat had provided to clean and slice the apple into paper-thin slices.

Kaiya watched him, drinking the soup, and when he put a plate full of fanned slices back on the tray, she ate one of them absently. The white knife vanished again, but it was the vanishing of skill and hidden sheaths, not magic. It was a blade he’d most likely always carried with him in his mortal life, and yet not one recorded in his history. Like his demon, it was a secret side of him.

When had she first seen it?

When the werewolves had attacked. One had died at her feet, its throat slashed by the white knife. Its blood had spattered her. How had it gotten so close. Had she been in that much danger?

No. Arjuna had been playing with the werewolves and with her then, just like he was playing with her now.

She ate more apple slices, staring at him, her brow furrowed. The question was, _what_ kind of game was he playing?

“How do you feel, Master?” he inquired solicitously. “Have you had enough to eat?”

After another bite of apple, she considered and then said frankly, “Tired still.” She couldn’t be grateful to him, not when she didn’t understand his games or agenda. But she now felt certain that she could trust him with her life, even within this framework he’d set around the two of them. She might be his toy, but she was a toy he intended on preserving.

The thought had frustrated her before. It would definitely frustrate her again. But here and now, when she was clean and full and pleasantly tired, where there were no enemies to fight or protect Ritsuka from, dying would be a waste of Roman’s gift of friendship. She appreciated the thought that she’d be able to sleep safely.

Safely, but perhaps not peacefully.

The demon said, “Excellent. Time for sleeping,” and pulled her from her chair. A moment later he’d settled onto the bed and pulled her against his still-clothed chest.

“You don’t sleep,” she protested even as her body nestled against his. “What are you doing?”

“Holding your naked body, Master,” he said, once again in that infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Even as scrawny as you are, you’re a pleasant armful.”

She tried to kick his shin without lifting her head from his shoulder. “Go away. Get out. How do you expect me to sleep like this?”

“Shh,” he said. “Close your eyes. I’ll wake you in the morning.” His fingers stroked down her bare spine in a way more enticing than relaxing. But the sensation made her close her eyes. Slowly, slowly her consciousness narrowed until all she was aware of was his heady, spicy scent and the rhythmic movement of his fingers.

And as sleep crept over her, as she relaxed utterly against Arjuna, the demon smiled once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading. OCs aren't everybody's cup of tea, but I felt like I couldn't properly explore Arjuna's character when he had to share Ritsuka with a bunch of other Servants (and plenty of people have done that already). I wanted to see how he interacted with somebody he didn't have to share, and thus Kaiya was born: as unlike Ritsuka as I could imagine.


	4. Calibration

Kaiya woke in darkness, alone in her room and with a full bladder. She stumbled to her bathroom to take care of that while only half-conscious, only remembering recent events when the ache in her thighs flared as she headed back to bed. _Oh yeah. Right._

_I’ve gotten myself into _so_ much trouble this time, mom…._

Suddenly wary of what she couldn’t see, she paused on the threshold of her bathroom and said softly, “Arjuna?”

When there was no reply, she frowned. Then she swept up her communicator wristband, noticed it really was the middle of the night, and moved quickly to get dressed. He wasn’t here, and that worried her. She couldn’t forget what he’d done the last time he’d left her to sleep, nor the empty village the next morning. Perhaps he’d just stepped out, perhaps he’d be right back… but he didn’t.

She stepped into the dimly lit corridor beyond her door with no clear idea of where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do. _Find him_, part of her whispered. _Find somebody else, _another part of her commanded. Instead of making a decision, she wandered aimlessly in the direction of the communal spaces of the research station.

Every so often she heard the distant, quiet sounds of other Servants arguing or laughing. They almost never slept, but they did usually try to observe the official nighttime hours of the living humans in that they didn’t play loud games, have brawls, or put on impromptu concerts between 11pm and 6am.

She passed the darkened cafeteria and paused at a clink from within. Nobody who belonged there would be inside with the lights off. After squinting into the darkness, she leaned against the wall outside, waiting for whoever it was to emerge. When a familiar green-garbed figure stumbled out, holding a bundle made from his cloak, she couldn’t help a small smile as she said, “Hi.”

Robin Hood soared into the air and landed in a crouch, holding the bundle close to his chest as he looked around wildly. Bleary green eyes focused on Kaiya and he said, “Oh. It’s you.”

Kaiya looked at him doubtfully. “Are you stealing booze from the kitchens by wrapping it in your Noble Phantasm?”

He turned his body as if to hide the bundle from her gaze. “You can’t have any. I’ll get yelled at.”

“You’re going to be more than yelled at if EMIYA finds out you’re stealing his alcohol,” pointed out Kaiya. “What are you doing with it?”

“Just having a little party with some of the boys.” He paused, thinking, and added, “You can’t come. I’ll get yelled at.”

Frowning, Kaiya said, “Are you making up for missing the drinking contest?”

Robin scowled. “Don’t you wrinkle your nose at me like that, missy. No matter how cute you are, no booze.”

“I don’t want any,” Kaiya said, rubbing her nose. “I‘m still dealing with the consequences of last time.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “Right. _Him_.” He frowned down at the bundle and then pushed it into Kaiya’s arms. “Hold this a minute.”

“Wait—” Kaiya had some idea what he intended, but couldn’t stop him before he dematerialized. Only a few seconds later, he rematerialized, his eyes clear, his five o’clock shadow gone, and perfectly sober. “You didn’t have to do that.”

He took the bundle of bottles back again. “Whatever. Are you all right? We noticed you’ve been in your room since we got back. _He_ said you were resting.” His keen gaze swept up and down Kaiya, and she flushed. She believed all of the marks Arjuna had left were covered by her clothing, but she’d been wrong about stuff like that before. And of course the flush was answer enough.

“Oh,” repeated Robin. His eyes dropped to her left hand with its unused Command Seals, and his gaze went faraway. After a moment, he shrugged. “Come on, I’ll take you to da Vinci.”

“What? Why?” asked Kaiya, with a surge of panic reminiscent of being called to the principal’s office.

He raised an eyebrow. “Nightingale, then?”

“No!”

Robin sighed in exasperation. “Come on, Kaiya. You need advice I’m not qualified to give you.”

“And you think Nightingale or da Vinci _are?” _Kaiya was frankly amazed.

Shifting his bundle of bottles, he scratched his nose. “Holmes?” At her skeptical look, he said, “Dantès? That’d get ugly, though. Might as well take you to Karna at that point.” A pained expression crossed his face. “Yeah, let’s not do that.”

“What kind of advice do you think I need?” she asked, a touch sulkily.

Rolling his eyes, Robin said, “You’re walking around in the middle of the night, alone, after being incommunicado all day dealing with _consequences_ related to your Servant.” His gaze dropped to her hand again. “I’m guessing whatever’s going on, you don’t hate it. But I happen to know there’s a whole set of things you don’t hate that are pretty bad for you.”

Kaiya twisted her mouth in annoyance. “So you’re going to turn me in for smoking behind the gym?”

“Oh my God—” Robin stopped and knuckled his forehead. “You know what? I’m just going to let you—”

“Why can’t I just talk to you?” she asked softly.

He stared at her a moment before sighing. “Yeah, okay. How about we find somewhere to sit and you can have a go at convincing me everything’s peachy keen.”

A quiet voice down the hall said, “Don’t you have a Master of you own to annoy, poacher?” Arjuna stood a few yards away, wearing the casual sleeveless form of his outfit. Unexpected pleasure at the sight of him surged through her, and Kaiya inspected him, trying to figure out where he’d been. He didn’t look like he’d been fighting, at least.

“Damn it,” muttered Robin. He closed his green eyes briefly. When they opened his gaze had a hard light. “All right. Let’s do this.”

Kaiya glanced at him uneasily, remembering with a surge of guilt how she’d simply let Arjuna threaten him before. He didn’t deserve to be tangled up in her bad choices. She shouldn’t have interrupted his midnight thievery.

As she was trying to figure out how to release Robin, he crouched down, letting the bottles he’d stolen roll out of his cloak. As he set them upright one by one along the wall, he said deliberately, “Are we friends, Kaiya?”

Pushed completely off her guard, Kaiya said, “What?” Yet while she didn’t know where this was going, she couldn’t imagine saying _no, _not when asked so directly like that. It was an odd thought, but as much as any Servant _could_ be her friend, Robin Hood really was. It wasn’t the same as her human friends (_or Roman)_ but—“…Yeah, I guess so.”

“Right,” he said, and stood, swinging his cloak around his shoulders. Only then did he meet Arjuna’s calm dark gaze, his own gaze like flint. “There you have it, prince. We’re friends. Do you have a problem with Kaiya talking to friends?”

“I am merely my Master’s Servant,” said the demon, with a small smile and his eyes full of secrets as he spread his empty hands.

“Yeah,” said Robin, sounding supremely unimpressed. His mouth twisted and he blew out his breath, jamming his hands in pockets. “Well, you haven’t been here very long this time and I’m pretty sure you didn’t pay a lick of attention to her on your last go. Princes like you never do notice the staff, do you?”

Arjuna’s smile faded as his gaze sharpened. “Careful, poacher.”

Kaiya frowned at a growing sense of unease about where Robin was going with this conversation. She didn’t like being talked about, even by a _friend._

“Oh, I am. Every damned day, prince. But I was talking about your precious Master here. You want to keep her? _You_ be careful. Be careful what games you play. Or you’ll lose her. And it may not be the way you expect.”

Arjuna stared at Robin for a long moment before saying softly, “I am very careful with what is mine.”

Kaiya wanted to say something snide to remind them she was _right there_ but something made her hesitate. The tension between the two men was… odd. Not quite a territorial pissing contest and not quite good ol’ boys swapping lore about dem womenfolk…

No. She couldn’t make it out. It was probably some Servant thing, echoes of some communication on a level far beyond her weak human senses. Being snide would have to suffice.

“And isn’t this all very friendly?” she asked acidly. “Standing around talking about me like I’m not here.”

Still holding Arjuna’s gaze, Robin said, “Do you still want to go have a chat, Kaiya?”

It was the perfect opportunity to let Robin extricate himself, but after he’d asked her point-blank if they were friends, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just blow him off now. _Friends_ meant too much to her. Besides, while she didn’t _need_ to talk to him, but she couldn’t think of anybody she’d rather work through her thoughts on recent events with.

On the other hand, he’d been on his way somewhere else—

“Heya, Robin, did you get—what’s this, then?” drawled the gunslinger Billy the Kid, one of Robin’s closest buddies. He paced down the intersecting hall, his eyebrows going up as he glanced between Robin and Arjuna.

Arjuna said, “He was offering me some advice. Your concern is… noted, poacher.”

Exasperated, Kaiya said, “Arjuna, stop it.”

When he smiled at her and said, “Yes, Master,” her face went hot and she felt like an idiot, like he’d lured her into ordering him around.

Robin said shortly, “Got caught up in something, Billy. Might be stepping away for a while, so you can take the bottles—”

Still flushing, staring at the floor, Kaiya said, “Go back to your party, Robin. I’ll find you later when… when it’s not such a big deal.”

Robin suddenly turned toward her, his fingers closing around her elbow as he pulled her two scant steps away from both Arjuna and Billy both. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” muttered Kaiya. “Nothing I have to say is worth this kind of rigamarole. I don’t even know what I wanted now. Just wanted to hang out a little when nothing else seemed to be going on.” She glanced up, meeting his frown with one of her own. “Friends, yeah?”

He stared at her before the tightness around his eyes relaxed. “You’re an idiot, Kaiya. Yes, friends. It’s only been two bloody years.” He ruffled her hair, spiking it up. “I’ll grab you for coffee later, all right?”

Bottles clinked as Billy started picking them up. Kaiya scowled. “Yes, coffee. Now get out of here before EMIYA comes along and sees what you’ve done.”

Winking, Robin held a finger to his lips, before joining Billy in picking up the booze. He waved casually as they walked down the hall.

As soon as they were out of sight, Arjuna moved close to Kaiya, close enough to put his own hand on her head, finger-combing her spikes back down. “You should be sleeping, Master.”

Kaiya jerked her head away. “Where were you?”

The demon smiled. “Did you miss me?”

She gave him a hostile look. “Last time I slept and you went wandering, I regretted it.”

“Ah, well, I did warn you,” he said softly, but there was an odd curiosity in his gaze.

Staring at him in bewilderment, Kaiya said, “You warned me you were going to go slaughter a bunch of werewolves?”

With a short, scornful laugh, Arjuna said, “You can’t convince me you regret those animals getting their just deserts, Master.” Stooping to brush his lips from her cheek to her ear, he added,“I thought perhaps you might regret the aftermath you called down, but you don’t, do you?”

Kaiya pushed furiously at his chest and he stepped backward immediately, his eyes alight with humor. “Now, were you going somewhere? Allow me to escort you.”

“_What have you been doing?” _ she hissed.

Arjuna’s eyebrows went up. “Nosy Master, I’ve been enjoying the Southern Lights from the roof of Chaldea. I didn’t expect you to wake so easily without me.”

Her scowl fading to merely a frown, she stared up at him. “Really?”

His teeth flashed. “What must you think of me, Master?”

“You did kill the werewolves,” she muttered, beginning to once again drift down the hall to one of the observation bubbles. Maybe she could catch the aurora as well.

He followed just behind her. “They saw you as prey. But if it makes you feel better, they would have attacked your precious Ritsuka, too, once she’d won the contest they arranged.”

“How do you know?”

Flatly, he said, “I am not wrong about such things.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw his mouth twisted bitterly. “It is one of many… gifts I have been given.” His eyes narrowed as he met her gaze. “What?”

She skipped back a step, so that she walked beside him. “Stop staying behind me.”

After a moment, he said, “You are far too sanguine about the contract you’ve entered into, Master.”

“What, because I don’t want you trailing me like a dog?” She blinked up at him as she walked.

Arjuna put a hand on her lower back as if to steer her. “When you fail to keep servants in their place, they’re apt to take all sorts of liberties.”

Kaiya stopped, looking up at him in astonishment. “You mean you’re _not_?”

Once again the demon smiled, even as something kindled in Arjuna’s eyes. “This is exactly what I mean, Master. You should not be so… eager to be alone with me, and yet you sent the poacher away as soon as you saw me.”

Her mood darkening, Kaiya said, “I didn’t send him away because of _you_. I sent him away because of _me_.”

His fingers on her back traced up her spine and then provided just enough push that she started walking again. “Oh?”

It sounded like bait for a trap, but Kaiya never had been good at resisting these invitations. They always sparkled with the promise of reinforcing the truth _and_ alienating whoever was listening to her. She muttered, “I’m not worth his time.”

“Hah, my Master not worth a poacher’s time. You need to work on your jokes, my light.”

_Whatever_ froze on her lips at the endearment and she glanced up at him. A shiver ran through her body at his bared teeth and the gleam of anger in his eyes. His hand pressed harder on her back as he stopped holding himself to her pace, propelling her to a faster walk. When they came to one of the observation bubbles, with the light of antarctic summer dawn just brightening a floor crowded with potted plants, he pushed her in and then pinned her against the curving window-wall.

His eyes still sparking, Arjuna said, “Perhaps I should show you why you should be more wary, Master.”

Kaiya licked suddenly dry lips, her heart pounding as she _pushed_ back. “What, are you going to give me a bath again?”

His teeth ground together as his eyes darkened further, and he dug his fingers into her hair. “Yes, you did hate that, didn’t you? Such a perverse girl. Very well, shall we go even farther?”

He brushed his lips very lightly over hers, holding her head so she couldn’t move even a centimeter as he did. After a moment of that, he whispered, “If only you’d held your tongue, my light.” He gave her another featherlight kiss. “Then you might be getting what you so clearly want.”

She opened her mouth against his, trying to nip him. When that didn’t work, she twisted her legsto kick at him and scratched his chest with her nails. He ignored all of this to continue delicately kissing her.

When she instead licked him, his chest rumbled in a growl and he responded savagely, forcing her mouth open and stroking his tongue against her own—but only for a few heartbeats. Then he murmured, “Tsk tsk, Master,” and returned to his careful, exquisite teasing.

It didn’t take long before Kaiya was convinced he intended to drive her insane. With just his lips and the lightest touch of his tongue, he had her melting inside, with the tips of her breasts aching and desperate for more. It was like being in a very particular form of nightmare, without the ability to dream herself to a climax. And in between kisses he murmured to her, an endless litany of unwanted sweetness.

“My precious, sweet Master, so cute, so adorable, mine, mine, darling, I’ll always protect you, Master, poor little Master, trapped, wanting so much, ah, poor Master…”

At one point footsteps echoed down the corridor and stopped just out of view of Kaiya’s peripheral vision. She was only distantly aware at first, her entire body one burning circuit, but when Arjuna lifted his head briefly and the footsteps hurried away, she groaned at the realization of the stories that would definitely spread now.

In response, he kissed her again, more passionately, and she clutched his head, pulling him closer. As the kiss deepened into something less custom-tailored to torment her, she whimpered, wondering if she now could get him to take her back to her room or maybe a handy closet to finish her off. Wasn’t there one right down the hall where they got the water for the observatory plants?

But although his kisses had deepened he showed no sign of wanting to move past that stage, no matter how frantic she became. She pulled on his hair, which made him use his teeth. But that was all the headway she’d made when the alarm went off.

It was blaring, loud, with the lights flashing in a sequence Kaiya knew. She struggled to remember it as Arjuna lifted his head, his hands loosening in her hair. Blaring. Alarm. What was it?

Oh.

They’d just discovered yet another pseudo-Singularity. All Rayshift-related hands on deck, briefing in a quarter of an hour.

Kaiya sagged against the wall as Arjuna once again smoothed her hair. She felt exhausted and trembly from Arjuna’s teasing, so much so that when he lifted her chin to give her one more kiss, she couldn’t do anything but accept it. And in fifteen minutes, she’d be briefed on her very first real Singularity as Chaldea’s newest Master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up we start my own take on Salem, which is not exactly the Salem you might know.


	5. Storm Warning

As the meeting about the new Salem Singularity droned on, Arjuna paid attention with one ear—the endless wrangling didn’t require more—while focusing most of his attention on his Master standing in front of him. She kept tugging on her dark hair as her irritation with the proceedings grew, twisting it into the spikes he already knew she hated.

His Master. His ward, his charge, his plaything. Possibly his enemy. Most importantly, _his_.Even without looking, he could sense Karna near the front of the room, imagine his attention focused on the other Master, the one Karna had to share with almost every other Servant in Chaldea.

But Kaiya, scruffy waif that she might be, belonged only to Arjuna. Although he’d been unimpressed at first, he’d found he quite enjoyed playing with her. His decision to extract a different price for her intrusion into his secrets pleased him. She might be practically malnourished (pale skin over wiry muscle and bone with hardly a trace of a woman’s softness), but she was extremely sensitive to a man’s touch.

Lightly he placed his fingers on her waist and watched her shoulders tighten in response. He wanted to lean down and scrape his teeth across those rigid muscles, make her gasp and surge against him. He resisted. They were very much not alone, and he had sworn he would restrain himself under the eyes of others.

He lifted his hands and leaned back against the wall, looking at the line of her neck and thinking about how desperate gentleness made her. She preferred rougher play, but he found he liked her desperate; frantic; clinging. Not that there wasn’t something to be said for how she cursed him, scratched and bit and pulled his hair, told him she hated him and then begged for release at his hands. That… yes, that had been very good too.

“Come on!” Kaiya burst out, her irritation at the briefing finally boiling over. “You can’t really be planning on sending Ritsuka into an _obvious trap_ when I’m right here. That’s why you made me a Master.”

Arjuna’s brow darkened. His plaything had some bad habits, including an unfortunate tendency to misunderstand her role. He twisted his hand behind his back, reminding himself of his vow. Correcting her now would be unseemly.

Then, as the room’s attention shifted toward her, and him behind her, he smoothed his expression. He’d revealed too much of himself to Kaiya, but nobody else could be permitted to see his secret thoughts painted on his face. Even the freedom to be himself around Kaiya was perhaps too much, given what temptations it brought him in public. Ought he have killed her anyhow?

Da Vinci sighed. “Kaiya, _nothing _is coming out. One way or another we’d be sending Ritsuka in blind. And it’s Ritsuka’s job to handle this. We’ll send you as backup. Consider it on-the-job training.”

“For our _last Rayshift?” _said Kaiya bitterly. She hadn’t taken that news well at all.

“You never know!” said da Vinci brightly, in a way that put the whole briefing room on edge while absolutely forbidding further questions on the topic. “Now, I’ll be having a series of smaller meetings throughout the day as we put together a plan. Kaiya and Ritsuka, expect deployment in 72 hours. Since we’ll be limited in the support we can provide and we have no idea what we’re facing, I’ll be selecting the Servants very carefully, taking into account their flexibility, power set and ability to blend.”

Her gaze flicked toward Arjuna before moving to several other Servants. As the meeting broke up and Kaiya stalked toward da Vinci, Arjuna ghosted behind her, and once again caught a reserved glance from da Vinci. He knew she didn’t trust him. His demon _reveled_ in it, and in knowing the acting director had no choice but to send him wherever Kaiya was sent.

“This isn’t fair,” complained Kaiya to da Vinci. “This isn’t what Roman would have done. You can’t send Ritsuka someplace so dangerous without sending me in first. Roman would have wanted that—”

“Don’t you _dare_,” said da Vinci, her voice flat and her expression transmuted to rare anger, “suggest you know what Romani would have wanted. You clearly know nothing of the sort, despite all the time he spent talking with you.”

“But you—” began Kaiya stubbornly, and da Vinci held up a hand.

“No more, Kaiya!” She exhaled slowly and then said, “You want to be helpful and I’m giving you a chance to do so. For Romani’s sake. He saw something worthwhile in you. Stop trying to waste it.”

Kaiya’s hands tightened into fists at her sides, but before she could push even harder and provoke da Vinci into something regrettable, Arjuna brushed his fingers over the base of her palms. It was the lightest of touches, and it completely derailed his Master’s thought process. He curled his fingers around her wrists, pulling them back, just a little, and she inhaled sharply.

Da Vinci’s gaze flicked up to Arjuna as he bent over his Master, an odd mix of relief and worry in her eyes. He ignored it to murmur, “I’m looking forward to a real mission with you, Master.”

Kaiya blinked, her glazed eyes clearing, and then pulled her hands away from Arjuna. “Of course you are,” she growled, and turned to stomp past him out of the meeting room.

Once again, he trailed after her, watching in amusement as she did her best to pretend he wasn’t there. Instead of going to lunch as many of the others had, she went directly to one of the training gyms.

There were a handful of Servants already there, and judging from the way they greeted her, they all seemed as familiar with his Master as that green poacher. They all looked at Arjuna, too, and although his demon hated them, he kept his soul a still pool: his Master’s perfect Servant.

She gave him a look of dislike as he took up a waiting stance at the edge of the mat, announced, “I am going to spar,” and then turned her attention to the Berserker Beowulf as the big blonde man approached her.

“Come to play, squishy?” said Beowulf, grinning, and when Kaiya nodded tensely, shouted, “Yan Qing! Come help!”

The black-haired assassin joined Beowulf, tossing a careless smile in Arjuna’s direction before moving behind Kaiya. A couple of other Servants drifted over, as if Kaiya sparring was somehow an attraction.

For a moment, Beowulf and Yan Qing simply circled Kaiya, like wolves stalking prey. Arjuna recognized in Kaiya a hint of the odd floating grace she’d manifested in the werewolf village before he’d saved her from her attackers. It was intriguing enough to make him resist his instinctive desire to protect her even in this controlled situation.

He did find himself asking of Hector, standing beside him, “Two on one. Why does it take two Servants to spar with one little girl?”

With a disarming chuckle, Hector said, “That’s the rules. One to fight with her, and one to stop her from running away or getting hurt. She can’t have been drinking, either. She gets a little out of control then.”

_Back in the werewolf village:_

_Arjuna said, “So you _can_ defend yourself.”_

_She gave him a black look as she turned to return to the tavern. “Not really. Not unless I have to.” _

Arjuna watched now as Yan Qing came up behind Kaiya and whispered something in her ear, prompting a flurry of movement from her, kicks and strikes the Assassin brilliantly avoided. Then Beowulf moved in with a hammer fist attack Kaiya ducked. She backed away from both of them, toward the far edge of the mat, but Yan Qing blurred behind her, taking on the role of sheepdog to keep her from escaping as Beowulf attacked her. She bared her teeth, dodging what she could and getting in a few strikes of her own that had no impact on Beowulf’s solid form.

Hector observed, “It’s been a while since she’s come to play. She’s a bit more aggressive than I usually see her sober. Normally it takes a while before she gets up to speed.”

It became not just a test of Arjuna’s patience, but of his self-control. Initially, although she dodged very well, Kaiya took blow after blow from Beowulf. The Berserker was obviously pulling his strikes, but again and again, Arjuna’s Master slammed into the mat and kept getting back up.

Whoever had trained her had trained her first in avoiding attacks, and then in disabling attackers, and Arjuna was forced to admit she’d been trained well. But almost all Servants were faster and stronger than her. This really was nothing more than a game to them, like playing with a mouthy puppy.

Then she caught Beowulf once in a throw and surprised Yan Qing twice with sudden attacks behind her, and the feeling of the match shifted. More of the floating grace suffused her movements, until she was practically leading her partners in a dance.

“This is worth watching,” said Hector in satisfaction, and then added, “It’s actually hard _not_ to watch her when she really gets moving.”

They couldn’t lay a hand on her using their previous playful approach, and Beowulf’s eyes brightened as he started to take the fight more seriously. But it didn’t take long before Arjuna’s skin prickled as he watched his Master dodge a strike powerful enough to break her ribs. Then she dodged another, spinning aside to avoid an uppercut almost too fast to see, her hair lifting in a dark halo around her face and her dreamy eyes shining.

Hector frowned. “Ah, hm. You know, this may be too much.”

“Wulf!” said Yan Qing sharply, but the Berserker didn’t lose his laser focus on Kaiya.

Shaking his head, the Assassin moved up behind Kaiya as if to grab and restrain her, but she smiled and stepped sideways, allowing Beowulf’s incoming jab to take Yan Qing in the chest so hard bone cracked. Yan Qing stumbled backward, blood trickling from his mouth, but Beowulf didn’t even seem to notice, instead pivoting to watch Kaiya with a berserk glee.

Arjuna’s patience snapped. One successful blow from Beowulf at this point would cripple or kill his Master. The match had to end, instantly, but both Kaiya and Beowulf were in a mental state beyond the reach of words.

Beyond the reach of most words. His demon took over, stepping onto the mat and said pleasantly, “My light.”

Kaiya’s faraway gaze drifted to him, and he smiled, revealing his white knife to her. Then he took a single step toward Beowulf.

“No!” Kaiya gasped, her pupils constricting and her grace vanishing as her shoulders hunched.

_That_, Beowulf noticed. He stopped abruptly, glancing over his shoulder to find Arjuna standing behind him, somber and empty-handed. “Oh,” he said, blinking. “We done?” Then he looked around. “Shit, Yan Qing?”

“It’s cool,” said the other, rising to his feet and wincing as he prodded his own ribs. “I knew what I was in for.”

Then he added, “Good job, Kaiya,” and gave Arjuna a look with layers.

Kaiya stepped off the mat, her shoulders still hunched as she glared at Arjuna. He crossed to her side, although she tried to avoid him gracelessly, and took her arm in a grip like steel so that she couldn’t even try to tug herself away.

A red mark bloomed high on her cheek from one of Beowulf’s early hits, and Arjuna knew similar marks lay on her torso. They each made him angry, frustrated in a way he didn’t understand. But they were in public, so he would be everything he ought to be.

“Come along, Master,” he said gently, and moved her toward the little connected locker room. “You will feel better with a shower.”

“Fuck you,” she growled, tugging at him despite his grip.

He gave her a little smile. “My precious Master.” Then, because she was clearly still not in the right frame of mind, he simply picked her up and carried her to the locker room.

The small room smelled of soap and cleaning solution more than human sweat, unsurprising given the current population of Chaldea. Despite recent hires, Servants still outnumbered humans at least four to one. It had a small bank of lockers, a bench, a full length mirror, and two shower cubicles with a stack of towels in a cubby beside them.

Arjuna turned on one of the showers and ruthlessly pulled Kaiya’s clothes off while the water warmed, ignoring her complaining and struggles. Then he pushed her into the shower, closed the curtain, picked up her stinking clothes and went to fetch her clean ones. When he returned, she was still in the shower cubicle, muttering to herself enough that he didn’t need to check on her.

He gave her the time she needed, refolding the stack of towels so the edges were crisp and wiping down sinks that previous users had left blotched. When she finally turned the water off, he stood at the curtain with a towel over his arm, presenting it to her grasping fingers as her arm emerged.

A moment later, she emerged from the shower, the towel wrapped tightly around her torso. Her skin was flushed bright red from the shower, and she looked tired instead of angry. Her dark hair fluffed around her head where she’d towel-dried it, still damp enough that a bead of water trickled down her neck as she stared at him.

He remembered a similar bead of water as she’d emerged from the bathroom in a robe the morning before. Before they’d made their deal, before he’d been given the right to do as he pleased to her when they were alone. Even then, he’d wanted to lick that bead from her neck.

They were alone now.

Without any more thought, his hands closed on her hips and he nuzzled against her throat, lapping at the droplet of water, and then searching for more. She gasped and then whimpered, her body pliant against his. When he’d licked from her ear to her collarbone, his mouth drifted lower, toward the expanse of flesh wrapped in terrycloth. But a raised voice from beyond the locker room door interrupted the near-fugue brought on by the fresh smell and sweet taste of her skin.

He released her as he realized how unsatisfying it would be to indulge himself in this hard, bare little room. Instead he handed her the stack of her clean clothes, smiling when she glanced at them like a snake might be hidden within.

“Will you be more comfortable if I turn my back?” he asked, and smiled more as her gaze went to the mirror behind him.

Her mouth twisted. “Whatever,” she said, and dropped her towel to dress. As she did, he studied the bruises already darkening on her torso, overshadowing his own smaller and more precise marks. He made a mental note to have an illuminating conversation with Beowulf later. Perhaps when his Master was sleeping and could not be troubled by his actions.

An unpleasant thought occurred to him, and he frowned, his gaze lingering on the bruises. “Why do you crave punishment so badly?”

She lowered her eyes. “Because I’m alive when better people are dead.” Then she gave him an angry look. “Why are you so afraid of people discovering your true nature?”

It was the wrong question, and thus easy to answer. His voice cool, he said, “Because I should be a better person.”

Kaiya’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you want to be a better person at all.”

The demon smiled at her again. “Correct. Would you like me to tidy your hair, my light? I brought a comb.”

She scowled at him. “You keep breaking our deal, you know.”

“By offering to comb your hair?” He affected surprise. “Surely not.” When he moved toward her, she stood up quickly. “Amidst others, I have done nothing that was not in your best interests. As any proper Servant would.”

“Hah!” she said, which was no more than meaningless defiance to cover her escape from the locker room. Arjuna strolled after her, trailing her from the training gym through the corridors of Chaldea. She roamed for a almost half an hour, stubbornly ignoring him but pausing now and again to speak with some of the other Servants.

Finally, after hearing that the writers would be involved in the Salem Singularity’s management, she made her way to the suite they shared, pushing open the ajar door without knocking. Arjuna, still at her heels, looked over her head into the room beyond.

The study shared between Hans Christian Andersen and William Shakespeare (and sometimes Nursery Rhyme) had been repaneled in dark wood, and a magical fireplace provided the only source of light other than the tablets the writers worked with at a round table. They looked up as Kaiya peeked in, both greeting her in their customary modes.

“Hark! Our other Master approaches! As Ritsuka is our sun, so you are the moon, lovely Kaiya.”

“What do _you_ want, brat?”

Hesitantly, Kaiya said, “What are you two doing?”

“Working,” said Andersen flatly. “Now that you know, go away.”

“Lady da Vinci has given us an important mission, Master,” Shakespeare inserted smoothly. “I believe you’ll find out about it very soon. Perhaps this evening? Meanwhile, ’tis true what my curmudgeonly companion states: for now, we toil with tablet and stylus, like the scribes of old.”

“Oh,” said Kaiya. She glanced over her shoulder, looking at Arjuna’s chest instead of meeting his eyes. Then she walked further into the study, seating herself on the small couch set perpendicular to the fireplace. “Can I stay here for a while?” Her voice was small, almost childish in tone.

Andersen peered at her over his spectacles, and then glanced at Arjuna, who remained at the door. Then he sighed. “If you must, but be silent,” and then muttered, “That damn couch is hardly ever empty.”

“You will be our muse, my lady,” said Shakespeare grandly, and turned to Arjuna. “And you, great prince? Will you join us as well?” Behind him, Andersen facepalmed as Kaiya shook her head frantically.

Amused by both the writers and his Master’s obvious attempt to avoid him, Arjuna shook his head. “I will wait here while my Master attends to her business.”

Shakespeare laughed silently, winking at Arjuna, and then seemed to get distracted by a sentence on his tablet. Andersen took longer to return to his work, studying Arjuna in a way that bordered on the insolent. But then he too glanced at his tablet, scowled, and started scribbling.

Arjuna waited calmly, watching Kaiya as she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. The room was warm, the couch soft, and the fire crackled comfortingly. It took almost no time before the young woman began slowly nodding off. As soon as her head dropped completely onto her chest, Andersen looked up and said softly, “Will.”

As gracefully and silently as any shinobi, Shakespeare rose to his feet, lightly moved Kaiya until she was curled on the couch, and placed a blanket over her. Then, straightening, he turned to Arjuna and held a finger to his lips, his eyes sparkling. “She sleeps deep and true, great prince. Attend to your own business knowing your princess is safely supervised.”

“Yes, I’m sure you have something better to do than looming in our door,” added Andersen acidly.

Thoughtfully, Arjuna said, “Yes, thank you,” and took advantage of the opportunity to attend to some errands. Because Chaldea’s human staff was still minimal, everybody, Servant or otherwise, had to do their own housekeeping chores. Kaiya clearly avoided many of them, and Arjuna was pleased to have the opportunity to make up for her lapses.

After he’d taken care of her laundry, both of her personal clothing and her bedsheets, he reorganized some of her shelves. In the process he derived satisfaction both from the task itself and the knowledge that she would inevitably be irritated by his work on her behalf. Although he’d once thought his preferred form of acknowledgment to be distracted gratitude, he couldn’t deny that his demon enjoyed Kaiya’s more visceral reactions, both positive and negative.

It was the happy anticipation of her irritated scowl that sent him back to the writers’ study, where he found Kaiya still fast asleep on the couch.

“God, yes, take her away,” said Andersen bitterly. “Who knew sleeping girls were such a distraction?” He waved his hand at Shakespeare, who was leaning back in his chair nibbling on his pen as he contemplated Kaiya’s form.

“I merely seek to design the perfect role for our dark lady.”

Andersen snorted. “Her? Put her on the stage and she’ll be a mess. She belongs in the audience.”

“Ah, an assistant director,” mused Shakespeare. “Yes, that sharp tongue and tendency toward brooding. Exactly so. And yet I wonder…”

“And this one?” demanded Andersen, pointing at Arjuna.

“Caravan guard. Possibly stage dressing. No lines required,” said Shakespeare, without looking away from his muse.

Arjuna shook his head and went to kneel beside the couch. His Master slept deeply, half on her back, her lips parted and her hands flung over her head. She looked delightfully open as she hadn’t in her own bed, where he’d felt the nightmares tremble through her body and done his best to chase them away.

Gently he stroked her cheek and watched as her eyelids fluttered before she lapsed back into a deeper sleep again. Smiling, he ran his knuckle along her jaw and murmured, “Master. Time to wake up.”

She made a grumbling sound in her throat, caught his hand with hers and tried to curl around it. He brought his other hand up to continue stroking her face, leaning so close that his nose brushed her hair to whisper, “Kaiya.”

Her eyes opened and she turned to look at him, but he could tell immediately she was still mostly asleep. He ran his thumbs along her jaw, sharing her breath. Then, perhaps instinctively, she leaned up and kissed him.

After the last thirty-six hours, her mouth wasn’t new to him. But her initiative was, and it electrified him. All thought, all _awareness_ of their surroundings vanished as he pressed her back into the couch.

Then something lightweight, non-threatening, thocked between his shoulder blades and he realized he was in the writers’ study. As he pulled away from Kaiya, she stared up at him with eyes more alert but quite confused.

Then her mouth twisted in that scowl and she pushed him away. “My own best interests, was it?”

“The dinner hour approaches, Master,” Arjuna said, and bent to pick up the ball-point pen Andersen had thrown at him. Returning it out to him, he added, “Your hand must have slipped, Caster.”

Andersen took it back again. “No, I threw it at you. This is a writer’s study, not a bordello.”

“Hans!” said Shakespeare, in what appeared to be genuine shock. “How can you be so crude? It was the very essence of a fairy tale. The noble prince awakening the sleeping maiden—with a twist!”

Kaiya rose unsteadily to her feet. “What twist?”

“Ignore them, Master,” said Arjuna calmly. “It’s time for dinner. We shall learn more about the mission.”

“Yeah,” muttered Kaiya, after giving everybody in the room a suspicious look. Then her expression softened. “Thank you for your couch. I hope I didn’t snore.”

“You did, but I’m used to it,” said Andersen. “Now go away and take your caravan guard with you. _Some_ of us have work to do.” He gave Shakespeare a glare before returning to his own tablet.

In the cafeteria, Kaiya was called to a large table where da Vinci sat with Mash, Ritsuka, Holmes and a large handful of other Servants. There was a chair for Arjuna, too, but he chose instead to stand against the nearest wall, observing. Kaiya’s nap had done her well in terms of her self-control; she was determinedly (but obviously artificially) enthusiastic about da Vinci’s plan to send the mission team to Salem as an undercover acting troupe. She volunteered to join Mash in memorizing as much as possible of the scripts that Andersen and Shakespeare were preparing. She paid attention to Ritsuka’s disorganized ramblings. She even ate some of her dinner.

But when the meal broke up and Ritsuka invited Kaiya to the lounge to watch a movie, Kaiya declined. Without even a glance at Arjuna, she trudged back to her own room, and he could see the anger growing in her again as she shed the facade she’d tried to wear during dinner. By the time she reached her door, he could feel the sizzle of frustrated fury radiating off her.

He caught the door behind her and slipped in. She gave him a single angry look and then went to dig around in one of her drawers, moving aside her carefully folded laundry without noticing it to pull open a shoebox and extract an unlabelled bottle of amber liquor.

Arjuna leaned against the door, watching her as she poured herself a glass and then hoisted herself onto the low dresser to stare back at him as she drank the alcohol. Tension poured off her like a jagged blade about to fall.

Irritated without knowing why, Arjuna said, “Once again you seek out solitude with me rather than safer company.”

“I’d only upset them,” she said flatly. “Hardly a risk with you.”

“True,” he said softly, stepping toward her. He judged she was angry at herself and angry at him in about equal measure, as she’d nearly always been since he’d been summoned to her. But she was much better at hurting herself then hurting him, so that had to change.

He leaned past her and picked up the bottle of alcohol, placing it on a high shelf. “Drinking will only damage your ability to fulfill your commitments, Master.”

Her hand tightened on the glass, as if daring him to take that too. Then she gulped it fast, glaring at him before complaining bitterly, “I thought it would be different with a Servant. But not with you. Every time I feel a tiny bit of control, you take it away.”

“Poor little Master,” he said, smiling, deliberately provoking her.

Her eyes flashed and then her arm jerked and the glass shattered against the empty wall near the bathroom door. Shards glittered in the air and scattered across the floor. She followed them to the ground, diving for one of the shards, but she’d barely snatched one up before Arjuna was on her, pinning her outstretched arms to the ground and completely immobilizing her.

She growled, but as he flicked the shard of broken glass from her hand, he was enjoying himself completely. Sweetly he asked, “What could you have intended, I wonder? Or did you simply want this, your body beneath mine?”

Her chest heaved as she strained against him in vain, but her reflexive rage faded from her eyes.

He rubbed his nose against hers. “Now what shall I do with you, my light?”

“Bathe me,” she suggested sarcastically. In response, he bit her mouth, his tongue flickering within and stroking her own before he withdrew to contemplate her some more. She was so very fragile. If he broke her, he wanted it to be by choice, not accident… and not yet.

Her eyes were wide and worried, yet as he stroked her palms with his thumbs, her eyes closed and her face smoothed. When he loosened his grip experimentally, her eyes opened again and that scowl twisted her face. “Bastard. Monster.”

“Ah.” He smiled and nipped her ear as he tucked her hands underneath the small of her back where he could restrain her one-handed. Then he delicately nibbled his way down her throat to her chest until her shirt interfered, listening to her intermingled gasps and curses. As his mouth became more tender, her invective increased: _coward_, she called him, and _cheater. Monster. Liar. Con artist. Murderer._

Still smiling, he cut her shirt off her so he could bite her nipples, wrapping his tongue around the stiff nub as he scraped his teeth across her skin. At the first bite, she cried out, and at the second, her legs moved against his as she tried to arch her back. That was also when the name calling stopped. Or at least stopped until later, when he’d nipped his way down her stomach and brought his teeth and tongue to bear on the bundle of nerves hidden between her legs. Then she writhed against him, gasping his true name while saying _please_.

His tongue softened against her damp flesh as he lingered over tasting her. Her fingernails dug into his wrist as she tried to free her hands from his unbreakable grip, and she panted harshly, moving her pelvis against his mouth.

Lifting his head, he adjusted her so that he once again pinned her hands beside her head as he rose over her. He wanted to see her face as he brought her the release she so desperately craved, in exactly the gentle way she thought she didn’t deserve.

“Shh,” he whispered as he sheathed himself within her, smiling down into her overwide eyes. “Trust me, my light. As you say, I steal all your control, and so you are free. Whatever you do, whatever you feel, you may lay at my feet.”

Her mouth twisted as her eyes squeezed shut: an expression of pain rather than her usual angry scowl. “Fuck you,” she whispered, and he licked the tears leaking from her closed eyes, tasting her defiance for the remnant pride it was. That too he would take on for her, and so he began to move, out and in against her tight and silken heat, each stroke a lick of rising pleasure for him and a tightening of an exquisite tension for her.

He tried, he really did try this time to keep the control he’d managed the day before when he’d taken her sweetly. But he’d spent this whole day tormenting her, being tormented by her. She felt too good against him: her smooth flesh; her pebble-tipped breasts against his own chest; the scent of her hair; her gasps and cries.Everything about her seemed to enfold him, intoxicate him. Slowly, as his own desire took over, he moved faster and harder against her, chasing his own pleasure and driving her wild in the process. When she keened and jerked against him, clenching around him, he groaned as his own pleasure surged over him.

Panting, he lay upon her, feeling the rise and fall of her chest as her ragged breathing slowly stabilized. He watched as her fluttering eyelids stilled, as again she fell asleep safe in his arms. Finally, once he felt ready, once he felt _human_ again instead of demonic, he lifted himself from her, caught her up in his arms and bore her to the bed. After tucking her in, he went to clean up the glass and attend to the various other errands he’d set for himself.

**[poison so sweet]**

The next morning, she ate the breakfast he brought her quietly, without childish tantrum or dangerous provocations. Then she dressed and went once again to the writers’ study, where Mash was already memorizing the manuscripts produced by Shakespeare and Andersen.

Arjuna watched from his position at the door as Kaiya struggled with the snippets and speeches that Mash mastered effortlessly. Though she was clearly frustrated, rather than lashing out, she kept glancing at Arjuna and then trying again. He wasn’t sure how she could be deriving motivation from him; certainly he had little experience with the struggles she faced. An excellent memory was just one of many gifts he’d gained without effort.

As the lunch hour came and went, Kaiya was only a third of the way through the material she’d split with Mash. Displeased, Arjuna went to the cafeteria and returned with sandwiches—nominally for the writing team and the reading team both, but in truth entirely for Kaiya.

As she nibbled on half a sandwich, frowning at her work, Mash came over to the tray on the writers’ table. While inspecting the sandwiches, she whispered, “She’s really doing very well, isn’t she? She just keeps comparing her progress to mine, and, well…” Mash shrugged nervously. “I was a designer baby.”

“She’s human. We aren’t. She’s doing fine,” said Andersen, just a little louder, and Kaiya’s hand tightened around her tablet.

“However,” said Shakespeare, even louder, “There _are_ limits to how much any performer can memorize without a break. Hans, we must let these beautiful ladies go for a time, lest we cook the golden goose.”

“Yes, yes,” said Andersen, waving a sandwich. “Both of you get out of here. But come back tomorrow. We’ll need test readers for the final round of edits.”

Instead of arguing, Kaiya quietly put her tablet aside and stood up, her sandwich forgotten in one hand.

“Master, eat,” said Arjuna sharply. When she glanced at him and dutifully took another bite of her sandwich, he felt a chill. But at least she was eating, and more than just a scant half sandwich. She took an entire second sandwich with her as she wandered out of writers’ study for one of her rambles around Chaldea.

This time she stopped at the IT department where she’d apparently worked once upon a time. She chatted absently with her replacement for a while. Then she went by da Vinci’s workshop to talk about Mystic Codes, again in a semi-distracted way that left the acting director giving Arjuna more confused looks.

Outside of the workshop, she finally spoke directly to Arjuna for the first time since that morning. “I want to go spar again.” She stared up at him, her big dark eyes serious. “I’m not good at it, but I _feel_ good afterwards… unlike this morning. But… if you’re going to meddle again, I’d rather not.”

Unworthy irritation lanced through him. He’d been so very patient and he’d worked hard to suppress his urge to interfere until she’d been dancing with death itself. 

He demanded, “Do you wish to participate in the Salem mission?”

She blinked up at him. “Yes, of course. I… probably won’t be very useful, but at least I’ll be there… just in case.”

Acidly, he said, “Then I will continue to _meddle_, as you put it, every time you seem inclined to do something that would stop you from getting there.” Then he shrugged. “But I doubt that will be an issue in your sparring today.”

She gave him a puzzled look, and he responded with an ironic gesture for her to continue on the route she’d been planning before. After a moment, she sighed and did.

That day, Saint Martha awaited her rather than Beowulf, with Yan Qing once again volunteering to play the sheepdog. Martha gave Arjuna a polite nod as she pulled on her padded gloves. They’d had a mutually satisfying conversation late the night before, after Arjuna had finished his interaction with Beowulf.

Fortunately, Kaiya seemed just as happy to spar with Martha as Beowulf. And although the match started in a similar war, with Yan Qing whispering something in Kaiya’s ear, it proceeded along notably different lines, with Yan Qing taking a subtly more menacing role, while Martha offered tips and instructions to Kaiya and not hitting her nearly as hard. And although a fragment of the floating grace came to Kaiya, it never took her over entirely as it had the day before.

Even without it, Arjuna was pleased by her skill. In a battle if ever he had to focus his attention elsewhere, he was confident she could avoid capture or injury from almost any mundane melee assailant. The only difficulty was the curious conditions she required to access her skill. But Martha hadn’t understood that anymore than Arjuna did.

_“Without a sheepdog, she just stands there, stiff. She knows I won’t really hurt her, so she can’t bring herself to respond unless she’s overwhelmed or panicked. That’s why Yan Qing is so good at that part.”_

He was, too. Arjuna’s eyes narrowed as he watched how the Assassin laughed and teased Kaiya, right before whispering something in her ear that made her whirl away and strike out. The more Arjuna watched, the more he disliked the other man. Even more than the green poacher, the Assassin had an interest in Kaiya beyond the friendly. Arjuna would have to deal with him as well.

At last Martha declared the match ended. Kaiya was sweaty and breathing hard, but she had far fewer bruises and went to shower in the locker room on her own. This time, Arjuna had prepared clean clothes for her in advance, and he followed her into the locker room to wait there with a clean towel.

She opened the curtain entirely this time rather than fumbling around the edge for her towel. Water still running down her nude body, she looked up at him. Then she lifted her arms in a silent invitation for him to wrap the towel around her.

His breath hissed between his teeth and then he had the towel around her, and his arms too, and he was picking her up, laying her on the bench where the towel fell open and he took her breast in his mouth, sucking the water off.

Her fingers touched his hair and she said softly, “Arjuna, what would you do if I said_ stop?_”

He lifted his head, saw she was looking at him in the mirror. “We made a deal, my light. But if you wish to change the deal, I would give you a ten second start to invoke your Command Seals. You have so many friends beyond that door, too.” He watched her in the mirror as she watched him, silently counting. When he’d gone beyond ten, he smiled at her and returned his attention to her other breast, and then every other droplet of water he could find in a thorough investigation.

When he was done, though she’d become quite wet where it counted and he remained painfully hard, he closed the towel around her and placed her clothing before her. “Dress. I will finish what you invited later, in more comfortable surroundings.”

She sat up, picking up her clothes. “Yes. I tempted you, and I shouldn’t have.”

Arjuna frowned, catching her chin. “What is wrong with you, Master? What happened to your fire?”

She yanked her head away and muttered, “I’m doing my best. It’s just that my best kind of sucks.” Then she pulled on her shirt and the leggings Arjuna had picked out for her. “I guess I might as well get back to it, though.”

But before she turned to leave, she looked at Arjuna one more time in the mirror, and he saw, beneath a glaze of despair, a _hunger_, intense and hopeless, for what he’d been doing to her.

A strange woman. If she’d looked at him like that _before_ dressing, he would have given her what she’d wanted, uncomfortable locker room or no.

She spent the rest of the afternoon quietly working at small tasks da Vinci had suggested to her: assembling costume materials; reading up on what historical Salem had been like; visiting Medea. Through it all, Arjuna trailed her: an extra hand when she needed it; a silent counter to Medea’s wicked tongue, and always, his eyes on her, seeing beneath her clothes and beneath her skin to the wounded soul beneath.

Even at the team dinner that evening, she was quiet, no longer trying to protect artificial enthusiasm for a project she felt out of place in. Her companions noticed, they were kind, and only Arjuna seemed to notice how each encouraging word made her wilt a little more. Finally, as the team once again broke for evening recreation, she excused herself almost frantically. And as soon as she reached the corridor, she _ran_, all the way back to her room.

As soon as she was within, she fell to her knees, her hands pressed against her eyes. When Arjuna closed the door behind himself, she said, “Thank you. And thank you for the laundry. I noticed earlier, but I didn’t say anything.” She took a deep, gasping breath. “I know why you’re here, you know. You have your own space, the same as Mash, but you spend all your time with me, and I know why.”

“You’re mine,” Arjuna said calmly, moving so he could see how she hid her face behind her hands.

“Don’t!” she cried, and then caught herself, lowering her hands. “I mean, yes. We made a deal. I don’t want to break it. But you would be no different with another Master. Any Master other than Ritsuka.” She smiled painfully. “You deserve better than me. Somebody competent. Somebody who hasn’t been wasting the life others saved.”

Arjuna moved to where she knelt. She glanced up at him and then looked down, her shoulders hunched like an invisible cloak of despair covered her. “Maybe I could find—”

He twisted his fingers into her hair, pulling her head up. “Stand,” he commanded, and yanked hard enough that she barely had a choice in the matter.

She didn’t cry out as she stumbled to her feet, although her eyes filled with tears she tried to blink away. He found they pleased him more than the dry-eyed, matter-of-fact way she’d discussed her unworthiness. He found also he was intensely irritated by her.

She thought he _deserved_ a different Master, thought she was useless, a target of convenience. _She_, who had _seen_ what he was and confronted him, who had accepted him rather than running away.

Arjuna knew very well the feeling of looking at what another had, and _wanting_ it. He didn’t feel that way now. Instead, he looked at what he _did_ have, and wanted that, more and more. And the only thing stopping him from having her exactly as he wanted her was… her. She was a puzzle and a problem, one that didn’t solve itself at his touch. No, she tied herself into new knots and then presented herself to him nude.

The thought brought all his arousal of the locker room rushing back, and he kissed her once hard before pulling her out of her clothes. She didn’t resist, but instead moved like he was the fragile one; like letting him touch her was drawing him into sin. Her hands on his arms were hesitant, flighty, and she kept searching his face as if expecting him to realize a dark truth any moment.

He had no words to reassure her. He didn’t even _want_ to reassure her. He had no interest in wasting his time convincing her of self-evident truths. What he _wanted _to do was bring her out of the sad numbness that had afflicted her. To make her _feel_ so much she screamed.

Roughly he turned her around, cupping her breasts in hands curved like talons as he bit her shoulder hard, just as he’d done before. She squealed and then cut herself off, panting as he held the bite. He dragged the fingernails of one hand down her stomach, not at all gently. When he relaxed his bite, she moaned as the blood rushed into the bruise he’d left.

“Good,” he whispered. “Yes, my light.”

Then he bit her other shoulder as he thrust his fingers into her core. She made a noise in the back of her throat as she pushed her hands through her hair.

“Why?” she panted, as if the question consumed her.

“You like it,” he murmured silkily, and turned her around again to push her back onto the bed so he could focus on her breasts, using his teeth to give pinching little bites that left vivid welts on the outside curves. Each time she squeaked or moaned, he paused to praise her.

At last, it was too much for her.

“Sweet Master,” he crooned as he bit her thighs.

She gasped, “No, stop!” with tears in her voice. “I hate you! You’re trying to torture me. Stop talking and teasing and just fuck me!”

He rose up over her, looking down at her flushed face, her tangled hair, her swollen lips. “Feeling angry, my light?”

“I hate you,” she repeated sullenly, and his demon sang with joy.

“Ah, such passion,” he said, and thrust into her, moving instantly to fucking her just as fast and hard as she always begged for. This time he held himself as long as he wanted, bringing her to her release twice before he let himself finish.

She was awake still as he lowered himself half on her, half onto the bed, the pleasant afterglow still tingling through him.

“You really are cruel,” she said, as if it was wondrous to her.

“You had every chance not to unlock my demon, my light.” He drew his hand down her ribcage. “But there’s no going back now.”

“Could I have stopped you from killing the werewolves?”

He considered that for a long moment. “No. Not without foreknowledge and your Seals. As soon as they attacked you, their death was inevitable.”

“Oh.” She burrowed against him, and then said, her words muffled, “Would you have had sex with me that night if I’d asked for that instead of a hug?”

He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. Instead he stroked her spine, holding her until she finally fell asleep.

**[breathe damn you]**

The final day before they deployed to the Salem singularity, Kaiya began the day as Arjuna liked her best: fierce, determined, focused. She ate a good breakfast, scolded Arjuna for walking behind her, chattered at him more than she ever had before as they walked to the writers’ suite.

She was nervous, he realized. She fidgeted as she studied scripts, memorizing less but caring less as well. She frowned and shook her head at her own thoughts so often that Arjuna finally spoke to her directly as they walked to her sparring session.

“What troubles you now, Master?”

She gave him a sidelong glance, twisting her fingers together and then pulling them apart. “I’m just afraid I’m going to mess up. I’ve got to be careful, keep a close eye on Ritsuka. I… I can’t watch anybody else die.”

Arjuna frowned, remembering his Master’s worst personality trait. She peeked at him through her hair. “I don’t want to be stupid. I won’t be. I’m going to do my best. I just have to… be there. I have to protect her, even if I don’t do anything else. I’m alive, so I can do that.” She nodded, as if she’d said something bright and inspiring, but her words twisted like a corkscrew of ice in Arjuna, touching something deeper than mere irritation.

At the training gym, they were met by Martha and her new sheepdog, Sanzang. Penthesilia was there too, and several other women Servants, but Arjuna didn’t have a chance to identify them before Sanzang was politely shoving him out of the gym.

“This is a ladies’ gym today. You’ll have to wait outside. Go for a brisk walk. Meditate! Come back in a couple of hours.”

The door closed in his face, leaving Arjuna contemplating how he’d brought this on himself, and whether this was any better than watching Yan Qing play with what was his.

_Yes_, he decided, and went to see to his own preparations as he thought about Kaiya’s determination to _protect_ Ritsuka at the expense of her own life.

When he returned to reclaim his Master, she smelled like nail polish and hair products rather than sweat or soap, and she had a dazed look rather than a well-exercised glow. 

Clearly he’d missed another opportunity to help her dry off after a shower. Disappointment edged his voice as he said, “No sparring today?”

“Oh… we did a little,” said Kaiya vaguely, and then gave him a sideways look. “Then we got distracted talking. Martha wanted to tell me about her tarrasque and Sanzang had to talk about the Buddha, and Penth brushed my hair and told me how to kill you…” She trailed off, looking bewildered again. “They were all so nice.”

“You have everything you need to kill me on your hand,” Arjuna pointed out.

Kaiya glanced down at her Command Seals, and then shrugged. “She thought I needed to know other ways. I think it made her feel better somehow.”

“Hah,” said the demon, and they went along to their next meeting.

This one was more important than the troupe planning and general research meetings they’d attended thus far, for it was the meeting where da Vinci talked about her plans to power the mission. As part of some political game about Chaldea, part of the reactors normally used to supply energy to Servants in the field had been shut down already.

“However, we have an ace in the hole,” said da Vinci cheerfully. Behind her sat Merlin, looking harried. “Merlin was always a big part of powering Chaldean operations during the Incineration and he’s kindly agreed to help us out now.” But the face Merlin made suggested that ‘agreed’ was something of a euphemism.

“However,” continued da Vinci, her tone becoming severe. “There are hard limits. Most of the Servants I’ve selected for the mission have low energy requirements save for in emergencies. We only have the resources to send a single divine Servant.” She paused, looking as if she’d swallowed something sour.

Before she could continue, a voice from the front row said, “That will be Arjuna, of course.” A pleasant, calm, hated voice. _Karna. “_Kaiya can hardly go without him. Two Masters will be a boon on this journey and I know how dedicated Kaiya is to protecting Ritsuka.”

Arjuna drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? But he hadn’t thought it was possible to hate Karna more than he did five minutes ago, and now he knew he was wrong. The chilly corkscrew Kaiya’s self-destructive urges had driven into him dug deeper and broke through ice into a lake of pure rage.

“All right,” said da Vinci, in a voice bright and brittle. “Now I’m going to go over some energy-saving tricks you may find useful—”

She went on and on, as she had at the first meeting, and Arjuna breathed, in and out, and didn’t try to kill Karna. At his side, his Master looked at him in concern, but the only way he had to reassure her was to _kill Karna_, and Ritsuka too, and that just wouldn’t do.

It would be unseemly.

They were on the same side.

Once, he’d been a hero.

Kaiya wanted to throw herself in front of an arrow for Ritsuka. Karna had _charitably_ given up his ability to protect his lover so that Arjuna could go instead. And the demon Arjuna wanted to kill _everything_ in response. A similar urge had gotten him banished before. He hadn’t minded then. But now there was Kaiya,

He breathed, in and out.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. When dinner ended and Kaiya showed signs of finally accepting Ritsuka’s social invitation, Arjuna could stand no more. He came up behind his Master and whispered in her ear, “Time to go home, my light.”

She gave him a puzzled look. Before she could argue, he added, his voice even lower, “We are not alone, but we could be. I could make it so. Shall I? Or shall we go home now, together?”

Kaiya’s eyes narrowed, as they had that day in the woods when she’d seen him for what he was. “All right. Let’s go. We have an early start tomorrow anyhow.”

In her room, he stepped in behind her and once again closed the door. She put down some gear she had yet to pack and turned toward him, crossing her arms. “What’s going on?”

He stared at her, thinking about the way her hair tousled instantly, falling in distinct and adorable spikes that she hated.

“Arjuna?” she said, with a thread of uncertainty.

Her eyes were always dark, almost fathomless, even when she was enjoying herself.

Kaiya pursed her lips and then sat in the sole armchair, pulling her knees up. “You’d better not go on a killing spree tonight.”

“I don’t intend to,” he said, and advanced on her. She watched him warily. Wisely.

Then she abandoned any claim to wisdom by saying, “Is this about Karna? Because you’ve been grumpy all—”

“Shut up,” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear you say that name.”

Kaiya sighed. “That means yes, I take it.” She rested her chin on her knees, watching him as he circled around her until he passed behind her completely.

Delicately he ran his fingers through her hair, drew his nails down the back of her neck. “You have a particular delusion, my light. I realize it comforts you, but if it continues, it will only make my life annoying. So I cannot permit it to go on.”

She tilted her head back to look up at him in confusion, and he trailed his fingers over her throat. Then he had his hands wrapped around her neck as he said, “Understand this, my light. _You will only die if I kill you._”

He squeezed, very lightly, and then released her, drawing his fingers over her very wide eyes. “You will not die for Ritsuka. You will not die at your own hand. Nobody is permitted to kill you except me.”

Her brow drew together. “You can say that, but you don’t _know_. You can’t do everything. And at least I’m trying to be constructive—”

The demon laughed. “I can’t?_ I?_ My light, do you truly understand _who I am_? All I need do is knock, and every door opens for me.” He leaned down, brushing his lips over her forehead. “Karna gave up his place for me. _That_ is who I am. Admire his noble sacrifice if you will, but it was inescapable. He was born first, but it was I who had everything. He had to scrape and work and suffer, while I was peerless in my natural gifts. Admire him, but that admiration means _nothing_.”

His hands tightened and he pushed the chair away from him explosively before covering his face. It meant nothing and it meant everything. “Could I have been that?” he muttered to himself. “Would I have climbed as high if I had started so low?”

Then he started laughing and lowered his hands. Kaiya had turned in her chair, was staring at him with her brow dark. “Would you like to know the truth? Karna’s an idiot. An idealistic fool. That’s why he died, and that’s why I celebrated his death. Inside, of course. Secretly. But not secretly with you, my light. Karna will suffer a most unpleasant separation from his love, and he inflicted it on himself! He could have fought me for the right to be at her side, but he nobly gave it up. And I _am glad_.”

Kaiya studied him in silence. The desire to take her, claim her, show her exactly how she belonged to him swept over him. He reached out, sliding his hands around her shoulders.

Absently, she leaned back—not so much to escape him as to continue looking at him. Then she reached up to touch his mouth, tracing his fixed smile gently. His mouth twisted into a scowl and he jerked his head away from her touch. Then he pulled her to him, half over the back of the chair, and hid his face against her neck.

Once again she touched him gently, this time her hand on his neck. His skin twitched and he nipped at her. Then her hand sank into his hair and she twisted, yanking hard as she whispered, “Good. So am I.”

Only then did he realize _that_ was what he needed: not tenderness, not absolution, not sympathy, not _open doors_, not _gifts_. Not everything he’d always had. Not charity, either, where his brother turned having nothing at all into every virtue.

But Arjuna, selfish, greedy, possessive, murderous, _gifted, _was aware of every good thing about himself and every place he fell short. He should have been better. He should _be_ better, in this afterlife. And yet Kaiya had seen the truth so clearly. He didn’t _want_ to be better. He enjoyed his sin, and he enjoyed _being seen_ by her.

She pulled harder on his hair, and his spinning thoughts fractured. All he could think was that she was _his_, and he would show her that over and over again. He slid into the chair under her and then pushed her down onto the floor.

“Hey!” she said, catching herself on one arm.

He grinned. “Are you angry, my light?”

“Yes! What the hell—”

He took her head and pulled it toward his groin, and then freed his erection. “I don’t care. Pleasure me anyhow.”

Her eyes widened as she stared down at his flesh, and she gave a shudder that seemed to emanate from her core from the way she shifted her weight. Then she lowered her head and began to lick him.

After she’d stroked his shaft up and down, she took the head into her mouth and began to suck as she moved her tongue in circles. One of her hands gripped the base and he threaded his fingers through her hair, tightening and relaxing with the movement of her mouth. She felt amazing, including the little sounds she made as they trembled through him.

But she was touching herself as well as him, he realized, and pulled her other hand up to wrap those fingers around his cock as well. “Stay focused, my light,” he whispered. “You’ll be pleased soon enough.”

She gave him a dirty look, and worked her mouth and hands faster. Too fast, too sharp, so that he had to take her head and move himself in and out of her wet hole: harder, her saliva clinging to him as she tried to maintain suction while almost choking.

Then his skin tightened and he spurted into her mouth, a long, perfect sense of release enhanced by the way she kept working her mouth until finally he pulled away from her.

She wiped her mouth, scowling up at him. “Satisfied?”

“Never,” he said, and pulled her up into his lap, holding her back to his chest as he began to play with her.Her panties were utterly soaked and he slid two of his fingers within her core. “Now, we should talk, don’t you think?”

“Talk?” she gasped. “Arjuna—”

He moved his fingers in and out, and pinched at one of her nipples. “We deploy to a Singularity tomorrow, which apparently contains a town full of the primitive and the repressed. I understand that once they hung women for moaning like this.” He frowned. “Making you scream there might bring down annoyances.”

“Arjuna,” Kaiya moaned. “There’s a _demon pillar_ involved. Fifty thousand people have been stolen. We have to rescue them.”

“A properly heroic thought,” said the demon. “But none of those people are mine. _You are_. So be careful, my light. I will burn the entire Singularity before I let you die.”

All Kaiya could do was moan in response. Something about his hands, perhaps? But Arjuna would take it for now. He’d make her understand eventually, and meanwhile, well, she made the most delightful sounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get into Salem this chapter, but I failed utterly. Next chapter for sure. 
> 
> (Is anybody reading along who isn't familiar with the Salem Singularity? If so, let me know and I'll make an effort to provide a little more exposition than I would for an earlier singularity--although since Salem will have some significant differences from canon, there'll be some of that anyhow.)


	6. Witch's Ladder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My version of the Singularity known as Heretical Salem begins...

As the Rayshift took effect, da Vinci’s faint satisfied smile flickered as her brow furrowed. Her fingers twitched, as if around a pencil. Then she looked around. When she spotted Holmes standing behind her with a distracted expression, she stalked over to him, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him into the little Director’s Ready Room.

“Da Vinci—” began Holmes, but she cut him off.

“I am a genius, Holmes,” she said, picking up a pencil. “As a result, sometimes—_often_—I do things that surprise, even astound those around me! However…” She frowned. “I rarely astound _myself_. And yet I have. Can you, perhaps, tell me _why_ I sent Kaiya and Arjuna on this mission?”

Holmes raised one eyebrow. “Kaiya Hisau, psychologically damaged, with hair-trigger mood swings, and her emotionally unstable and fixated Servant Arjuna, suspected of recently wiping out most of the population of a small Singularity because they offended him? Yes, I’ve been wondering about that too.”

The pencil snapped in da Vinci’s fingers as she stared at him. “_Why_ did you not say something earlier?”

“Eheheh,” said Holmes, with a little smile that suggested he was intrigued rather than distressed. “I’m afraid we’ve both been subjected to some form of mental interference. I didn’t consider it until after they were gone. I was in the midst of analyzing my recent decisions when you pulled me aside.” His gaze once again went far away as he consulted his memory. 

Da Vinci picked up the broken pencil and sat at the desk, pulling out a sheet of paper and doodling as she thought ferociously.

Meditatively, Holmes said, “I believe my decision to support their partnership is still valid in the context of some of the forecasts I’ve discussed with you. However—” He touched his eyes lightly, “—I feel as if I have been… dreaming? The context weighting has shifted.”

Hopelessly, da Vinci said, “I’ll send for Jack, soon. She’s always resisted such effects before.”

“So have I,” pointed out Holmes. “Still, a necessary step. I shall prepare to adjust for her own mental pollution.”

“I’m trying to imagine who would _do_ this,” complained da Vinci bitterly. “Has that Demon Pillar reached all the way into Chaldea? If so, why would it _want_ Arjuna there?” She stared down at her self-portrait with only half the features drawn in. “Or is there something else at work?”

[elsewhere]

The newly named Atlas Theatricals troupe from Chaldea landed in the Salem Singularity in pitch darkness, on ground that crunched underfoot. The smell of earth and old trees surrounded them.

“But at least we didn’t fall this time!” chirped Ritsuka. “I didn’t expect it to be this dark _inside_ too, though.”

“It’s night, Master,” said Robin Hood dryly. “Just stay still for a few moments and let your eyes adapt.”

Kaiya exhaled slowly, every nerve quivering as she listened for movement near her. Once again the voice of her mother was loud in the back of her mind, pushing her into survival mode. 

“Kaiya,” breathed Arjuna near her. _Too_ near her; she hadn’t heard him. He didn’t touch her, though.

“All right, is everybody here? Time for roll-call,” announced Ritsuka, with her usual cheer. “I think we’re in a forest!”

One by one, the servants responded to Ritsuka’s roll-call. Shakespeare was the official leader of the troupe, while Mata Hari, Hector, David and Ritsuka served as his actors. Robin Hood had been assigned the role of stage hand and general understudy. _(“Yes, for the actresses, too, Robin. Why, in my time—”) _Lord El-Melloi II, tapped for his magical expertise when Medea refused to come, was the technical advisor, and Mash, elated at once again finding a place on a mission after a long convalescence, was the stage manager. 

Arjuna responded to Ritsuka calmly, his voice coming from just behind Kaiya as he stood in his usual place. Shakespeare hadn’t been kidding when he’d discussed casting Arjuna as a guard. The playwright had rambled on about how sometimes enthusiastic audience members wanted to join a performance, especially with such beautiful actresses on display—and apparently the threat of robbers was _very_ real. (_“For some reason, people always think actors had money, ahahahaha, if only…”)_

“Kaiya?” finished Ritsuka. 

“Yeah, I’m here,” Kaiya said. Like Robin Hood, she was a general understudy. Except her role was to sit in the audience during rehearsals and watch. Shakespeare had _almost_ managed to convince her that it was a crucial position, which said more about his powers of persuasion than anything else.

“Great! Robin, are you _sure_ it’s just night? It’s _really_ dark.”

“Shh. I hear something—” Robin’s voice faded as he moved away.

Despite the darkness, Kaiya closed her eyes to further concentrate on listening, and then stepped toward Arjuna’s warmth until she bumped into him. His long hand slid around her waist.

Although she’d never attended Clocktower, Kaiya’s mother had trained her in minor magecraft, just as her father had trained her mother. She could do a little bit of healing, she could create familiars, and she could work with Bounded Fields. It was a _very_ small amount of magecraft—and yet it was more than Ritsuka could do without the aid of her Mystic Codes.

Kaiya flushed, her concentration thrown off by the raw envy in the thought.

Arjuna responded to the ripple of tension that passed through her by leaning his cheek against her hair. “Shh.”

“This place is bad,” she muttered. “I can feel it in the air.”

“You can say that again,” said Robin grimly, from a different direction than he’d faded out. “What’s moving around in the woods isn’t friendly.”

“Animals?” asked Mata Hari uneasily. Her forte was people.

Robin snorted. “Yeah, there’s some animals, too. It’s not going to be dawn for hours yet, so we might as well start moving toward the village.”

“I can’t see yet, but Mash will hold my hand,” said Ritsuka. “Right, Mash?”

“Of course, senpai,” said Mash, and Kaiya could hear the blush in her voice. “I can at least see dimly now. Is anybody else having problems. Kaiya? Lord El-Melloi II? Shakespeare?”

Kaiya opened her eyes and stoically regarded the dark shapes moving against darkness around her. She was pretty sure that was a tree, and _that_ was David—or was it Hector?

“My dear young lady,” said Shakespeare. “I’m at a loss as to why you placed me with Kaiya and Lord El-Melloi II, who both have mortal bodies. I am a proper Servant!”

Dryly, Lord El-Melloi II said, “And I’m a pseudo-Servant. I’m not going to break a leg, Mash.”

Kaiya ground her teeth. “And I’m a useless human. But Arjuna won’t let me fall.”

“Correct,” said Arjuna softly, sweetly, and she tilted her head back against his chest. He didn’t make her feel any better than the banter between the Servants did, but the solidity of his presence at her back promised both survival now and an emotional escape later.

“Let’s get a move on,” she said, lifting her head. She laced her fingers through Arjuna’s and stepped forward.

“Kaiya!” said Ritsuka, her cheer vanishing. “Don’t go ahead this time!”

Once again, Kaiya flushed, recalling her bout of temper in the werewolves’ micro-Singularity. “I’m not.”

“Thank god,” muttered Robin Hood.

“Careful, poacher,” said Arjuna in his sweetest voice.

“Oh, learn a new song, will you?” snapped Robin. “This way, people.”

They walked for about ten minutes, with Robin Hood and Hector in the lead, Ritsuka and Mash in the middle, Kaiya and Arjuna in the back, and everybody else strung out between them. They all had packs full of theatrical supplies (save for Robin Hood and Arjuna, who as the designated scout and stabber-in-chief were privileged with freedom of movement), and good-natured complaining about the load made up most of the conversation.

“I do like this dress, though,” said Mata Hari. “I know it’s just another costume, but it’s comfy. The sewing crew did a good job.”

Kaiya slid her hands into the pockets of her skirt. She, Mata Hari and Ritsuka all wore skirts with aprons, chemises and bodices—but they’d been improved past their historical models, both with mundane elements such as pockets, and a protective Mystic Code woven into the chemise.

“I see a fire ahead,” said Robin softly, his voice barely carrying to the back of the procession. “We’re nowhere near the village yet, though. Let’s see if we can get a look without being noticed.”

“Easy enough for _you_,” mumbled Kaiya, as Robin pulled his cloak around himself and vanished. But she too could see the glow of firelight and realized that whoever was at the fire wouldn’t be able to see anything beyond the circle of light. As long as nobody started shouting, the crackle of the flames would obscure the sound of their approach, too.

Besides, they were talking. Multiple piping girls’ voices rose over the snap of the fire, both together and individually.

“Chanting and dancing,” said Lord El-Melloi grimly. “Well, I suppose it had to start somewhere.”

“They’re making wishes.” Mata Hari was amused. “For such innocent things. New dresses, better hair, to see their true love’s face.”

“And yet,” said Lord El-Melloi. “Of such innocent games tragedies are born.”

Mata Hari’s eyes gleamed as she glanced at the tall Caster. “You can’t blame the children for the bad choices of the adults.”

Lord El-Melloi shifted forward. “At least I can’t detect any… oh.”

Arjuna’s grip on Kaiya’s hand tightened painfully. “What is this, Caster?”

Weakly, Lord El-Melloi said, “Well, we knew we’d be entering a region prepared to receive us.”

“A trap,” said Kaiya bitterly. “What’s going on?”

Lord El-Melloi turned to the others. “Can any of you turn into spirit form?”

“Eh?” said Hector, and then, “Odd. No.”

“Neither can I,” added David. “This _is_ an adventure.”

“Something presses against us,” said Arjuna, an unusual thrum of anger under his voice. “Like a giant hand, holding us to these bodies.”

“It’s affecting my magical perceptions, too,” admitted Lord El-Melloi. “Kaiya, you have some magecraft training, do you not?”

Startled at Lord El-Melloi knowing _anything_ about her, as she’d barely ever spoken to the Servant, Kaiya said, “A little.”

“She can do more than I can, for sure,” said Ritsuka, with a cheerfulness that Kaiya was starting to suspect was a form of insanity.

“Well, come forward,” said the Caster testily. “Tell me what you can sense about these girls.”

“Wait!” said Robin, re-appearing with his bow out and an arrow notched. “Somebody—”

A young girl with white hair appeared, ghostlike, from behind a tree near Kaiya. “Outsiders…”

“Robin, put down your bow,” said Ritsuka sharply. “Hi! Are you friends with those girls over there?”

The girl tilted her head. She had strange, pale eyes and a thin face that made Kaiya uncomfortable without knowing why. “Friends…? That’s wrong. I just… live here, I guess.” Her eyes narrowed. “But you don’t. You were… talking about magecraft.”

“Dammit,” muttered Robin Hood.

“Ah, young lady,” Shakespeare began, bowing with a flourish. “We’re actors. We were rehearsing some lines. Can you tell us if we’re near your fine township?”

“Fine township?” The girl made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “You’re… liars of some kind, all right.” Her eyes strayed to Kaiya and Arjuna and then widened as she focused on Arjuna’s tall, dark form and then their linked hands. 

She stepped back, gabbling suddenly, “I have to go, I have to go!” and then she turned and ran into the forest, vanishing so easily that Kaiya suspected magecraft was involved.

Ritsuka sounded puzzled as she said, “What was that about?”

“I have no idea,” said Robin Hood blankly, with similar murmurs from most of the others. But Mata Hari moved to where the girl had stood, looked back at Kaiya, and said, “Hmm, I see.”

“What?” said Kaiya sharply.

“Prejudice, my dear,” said Mata Hari sadly. “Though I would have expected—”

Mash cut in, “Something’s wrong at the fire, senpai!”

A high young voice screamed, another voice tried to hush her, both against a backdrop of rumbling growls.

“Dammit!” repeated Robin Hood and swung around, pulling his bow out again. “Come on, Prince!”

Kaiya let go of Arjuna’s hand, or at least tried to. But he just slid his grip up her wrist and hauled her to the front behind him. Gaunt four-legged beasts, too big to be dogs, the wrong shape to be bears, menaced the figures huddled around the bonfire.

Only there did Arjuna release Kaiya, manifesting his bow and picking off one of the beasts lunging for the little girls who had been dancing.

“Ritsuka, Mash,” said Mata Hari firmly. “Let’s get the children out of here.”

“I’ll go with them,” said David. “Hector—?”

“I’ll stay,” said Hector laconically.

Shakespeare strode forward, straight into the pack of animals toward the kids. The beasts seemed as shocked by his effrontery as Kaiya was. But Robin and Arjuna made sure none touched him. “Young ladies, you are out far too late. Come this way! Do not be afraid of our brave archers. They _never_ miss.”

Most of the girls obeyed the Caster instantly, following the direction he indicated to where Mata Hari waited to direct them toward Ritsuka. As they did, the strange wolves twisted and lunged, yipping and bringing more and more of them out of the woods. 

“We’ll get them to the village!” called Ritsuka, throwing out her hand to send a blue sparkle of magic at a beast that got too close.

Kaiya frowned. Her vision was still inconsistent in the firelight, but it seemed like some of the wolves were injured as they arrived—and some of the injuries looked like they ought to have been found on corpses, not slavering, snapping living things.

“The fire,” squeaked the remaining recalcitrant girl, a blond child in a black dress. “We can’t leave it—”

“Go _now_,” commanded Arjuna, in an awful voice that sent chills down Kaiya’s spine.

“Shit,” muttered Robin Hood. “Shakespeare, grab her and get out of the line of fire!”

Shakespeare grimaced and scooped up the panicking child before loping after the other girls. The beasts surged after them.

His mouth a thin line, Arjuna drew back his bowstring. As he released, the glowing missile that manifested burst into flame. It struck the center of the pack with a thunderclap. A sheet of blue-white fire exploded in the night, leaving an impression on Kaiya’s retinas of the animals as silhouettes of seared skeletons before her eyes squeezed shut in self-defense.

Curiously, the heat from such an impact barely registered for Kaiya. She was far more aware of Arjuna’s cool hand moving to the back of her neck. Once again, he was angry, as he’d been the night before. But it was like his anger at Karna, not at her.

“Weak,” he said coldly, and Kaiya cautiously opened her eyes. The bonfire had been put out and beast corpses littered a new clearing in the forest.

“Oh, excellent,” said Lord El-Melloi sarcastically. “Let’s hope there wasn’t any useful information to be gained from studying the site. Kaiya, I don’t suppose you learned anything before your pet monster obliterated everything?”

Kaiya shook her head but before she could speak, Arjuna said, “What _useful information_ do you need? We _know_ a demon pillar is here. This is a tiny Singularity. It can hardly hide unless we play its game. And I dislike its petty attempt to limit my power.”

Robin Hood smacked Arjuna on the shoulder as he said, “Well done, then! You’ve shown it just how much power you still have!”

Arjuna ignored Robin, although his cool fingers on Kaiya’s neck moved into her hair and tightened, not painfully. “Master, please order me to immediately find this demon pillar so we can end this farce.”

Completely off-balance by the realization she’d been left with half the Servants under her nominal Mastership—and it was the stubborn Servants, too—Kaiya cast her gaze around frantically until she met Hector’s calm, thoughtful eyes. He shook his head very slightly, and Kaiya remembered the context of their mission.

“Not until we find something about the fifty thousand missing people.”

Arjuna’s fingers twisted in her hair. “Ah, I see. You wish to keep me with you. Well, I can appreciate that as well.”

Hector scratched his cheek. “Let’s catch up with the others. David’s the only one there I’d trust in a fight and we don’t actually know what this village will contain.”

“Yes, lets,” said Kaiya hurriedly. She pulled her head away from his hand, and in response he slid his hand back down her neck and back to curl around her hip. For a moment she thought he was going to press her against him, pick her up rather than let her walk freely. 

Then he pushed her away. “Don’t worry, Master. I won’t leave you.”

Shaking her head, Kaiya started trudging in the direction Shakespeare had vanished. She could still barely hear the alarmed chatter of the little girls and the ongoing rumble of Shakespeare’s voice. They weren’t moving quickly and her own group gained ground.

“Abby!” came a new male raised voice. “Abby, what have you been _doing_?”

“Uncle!” said Abby. “These people saved us! They’re _actors_!”

“Are they?” Abby’s uncle sounded doubtful.

“Oh yes,” said Shakespeare. “The rest of our troupe were delayed dealing with the savage beasts lured to young Abby’s fire. They should be here—”

Kaiya pushed past a bush and stepped onto the rough track where Ritsuka’s group had paused. An ordinary-looking man of middle years studied them with a remarkably keen gaze.

“So I see. Hmm…” said the man. “Well, I’m Randolph Carter. Thank you for saving my foolish niece and her friends from her mania. I would speak with you more at my house, if you please.”

***

Two hours later, Kaiya peered out of the tiny window in the servant’s room she’d been given to share with Mata Hari. Ritsuka and Mash had been placed with Abby, while Randolph Carter’s only ‘proper guest room’ had been offered to Shakespeare and Lord El-Melloi II, as the purported leaders of the troupe. Everybody else had been placed in the Carter barn.

Their host had been unexpectedly firm about the rooming assignments, too. Kaiya had tried to stay in the barn as well, and Carter had flat out refused to allow it.

_“I will say nothing of the sleeping arrangements you make on the road, for I know an actor’s life can be hard. But while you are in Salem, if you wish to be treated with respect and allowed to perform, you will permit no hint of impropriety to taint the reputation of your young ladies.”_

Arjuna leaned against the outside of the barn, observing the Carter house. He didn’t seem the least inclined to sleep, although all of the other Servants had accepted it as a good way to conserve energy expenditure. Knowing he was keeping watch didn’t reassure Kaiya as much as it had seemed to reassure Ritsuka and Mash, though.

“These beds are softer than I expected!” said Mata Hari, sitting down on one of the narrow little beds Carter had at some point provided for visiting servants. “Come on, Kaiya. You do need sleep.”

“I only woke up a few hours ago,” Kaiya pointed out. “We left in the Chaldea morning and arrived in Salem midnight.”

“Yes, I understand that overcoming ‘jet lag’ is a challenge,” agreed Mata Hari. “But the book I read said a nap would help.” She looked around at the tiny room, which had two beds, two chests, and a small table with a lamp. “Besides, there’s not much else to do.”

Kaiya looked out the window again at Arjuna. It was hard to tell through the glass and distance, but she thought he was looking directly at her. She wanted to go out to him, but she didn’t understand why. All she knew was that she was nervous and uncomfortable in the vast Bounded Field that comprised the Salem singularity. And Arjuna’s hands on her had frighteningly quickly come to mean _normalcy_ to Kaiya. 

_Dangerously irrational,_ whispered her mother in the back of her head. She remembered his fingers stroking her throat as he promised her that only he was _allowed_ to kill her. Shivering, she climbed into her own bed, still dressed except for her shoes. Mata Hari sat brushing her hair for a while, humming softly, and despite feeling strange and out of place, watching the Servant soothed her into closing her eyes for just a few minutes.

When she opened them again, morning sunlight was streaming through the window, and Arjuna crouched beside her bed. He had a finger on her cheekbone and a faint smile curving his mouth. “There’s porridge for your breakfast, but they insist you must come downstairs for it.”

Blinking, confused at how much time had passed, Kaiya pressed her fingers against Arjuna’s mouth. He enjoyed waking her up far too much.

He caught her hand with his and then he was kissing her. His tongue slipped into her mouth and his hand was burrowing into her loosened bodice before she could do more than blink. Her nipple hardened against his palm even as she pushed against his chest. 

Laughing, he lifted his head and freed her. “Porridge. Other things later, my light.”

Adjusting her bodice and sitting up, Kaiya grumbled, “You seem to be in a better mood.”

“Oh no,” he assured her, and she saw the glitter in his eyes. “I’m still looking forward to punishing the creator of this singularity, as well as having you beneath me.”

“Of course,” Kaiya said gloomily.

Downstairs, a bright, spacious kitchen was crowded with most of the Servants, along with Ritsuka. Only Robin Hood and Hector were gone. A mostly empty pot of porridge studded with dried apples stood on a broad table, with a few wooden bowls and spoons. Ritsuka and Mata Hari stood in front of pans of water at a sideboard, washing out other bowls.

Shakespeare rose from a bench as Kaiya entered. “My lady, be seated and break your fast. I should be on my way. We needs must find a suitable place to ply our trade, after all.” With another flourishing bow, Shakespeare went through an outside door.

With his usual half-smile, David rose as well. “I think he forgets why we’re here. I’ll go with him.”

Kaiya took a bowl of porridge and sat down, watching as Mash doodled on a chalk slate she’d found somewhere: what looked like a very rough map. “We ought to all explore today. Set out in all directions, but in pairs.” She hesitated. “I can stay here with Lord El-Melloi to work on setting up…” she glanced around and then lowered her voice, “the communication device.”

Lord El-Melloi snorted. “As if I need _your_ help. No, I need Ritsuka, and I know very well you two want to walk in the sunshine together. I’ll release her to you after some experiments.”

Mash turned pink, but Ritsuka said, without her usual cheer, “Thank you, Lord. Maybe we can bring Abby with us.”

“Senpai—”

“What’s wrong?” interrupted Kaiya. She’d met Abby briefly in the middle of the night, but the blond leader of the children had been dejected and worried by the arrival of her uncle and guardian.

“She wasn’t allowed to have breakfast!” burst out Ritsuka, a wooden bowl clattering. “And she only gets water for lunch.”

“She’s being punished,” said Mata Hari apologetically. “For last night. Her uncle—”

“Uncle, no,” came Abby’s anguished voice from outside. Inside the kitchen, everybody fell silent. Mata Hari and Ritsuka both looked out the unshuttered window, while Kaiya went to the door.

A small, dark-skinned woman stood quietly beside a pump, her head down, with Carter and Abby beside her. Abby seemed on the verge of tears, while Carter’s mouth was a thin, angry line.

“Don’t punish Tituba, Uncle! It wasn’t her! It was…” Abby hesitated, guilt and fear transparent on her face. “It was me.”

Tituba lifted her head halfway and Kaiya realized abruptly there was something… odd about her. She knew that technically the woman was a slave, but for some reason the word _Servant_ kept ringing in her head. Yet her sense of presence was barely more than a mouse.

“Don’t be a fool, Abigail,” said Carter coldly, his eyes glittering. “I’ve spoken to the parents of the other girls and they all say Tituba taught you a chant intended to invoke dark spirits.”

“Nonono, it wasn’t her! I promise!” Abby wiped her eyes. “It was all me. I led the girls into temptation and… and you should punish me.”

“No,” said Tituba softly. “It was not you, Miss Abby.”

Abby gave Tituba a pleading look. “It _was_. Just me. Nobody else.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carter,” said Tituba, her voice firm. “I told the children stories about my birthplace and how I grew up. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” snapped Carter. “I’ve sworn an oath with the other parents to seal our lips about this, but you must never speak with the children again, and you will be heavily punished. It’s the only way.” As Abigail wailed again, he added, “As for you, young lady, you are forbidden from seeing the troupe’s performance, and if you do not regulate your emotions, you will be forbidden from speaking to them as well.”

Abigail’s eyes widened and she shoved her hands into her mouth, biting down on her knuckle. After a moment, she lowered her hands and said, “Yes sir. I’ll… I’ll do what you say. May I go?”

Tightly, Carter nodded, and watched as his niece turned and stumbled around the side of the house. When she was gone, he sighed and turned his attention to Kaiya, and the two faces peeping out the shutters. “I’m sorry. I’d taken last night’s adventure for mere mischief, but it turns out the girls were engaged in something far more dangerous.”

“More dangerous than going among the wild beasts of the wood?” asked Mata Hari gently.

“Yes,” said Carter grimly. “_That_ risk, your troupe averted. This new danger goes deeper.”

Kaiya rocked back and forth on her heels, still staring at Tituba in puzzlement. The slave shivered, raising her gaze briefly to Kaiya’s and then dropping it again.

“Where _are_ you from?” Kaiya asked.

Tituba cast a speaking glance at Carter, who waved a hand wearily, giving her permission to speak. “Barbados, miss.”

Kaiya frowned. There’d been the same tone in her voice as when she’d accepted blame for Abby’s forest ritual: the tone of somebody stating a truth they knew reality denied.

But before she could probe further into this, Ritsuka said hurriedly, “Kaiya, if you’re done with breakfast, you should go explore with Arjuna, just like everybody else!”

Kaiya’s hackles rose momentarily and then she forcibly calmed herself. Whatever was happening in this version of Salem was odd, but not immediately dangerous—at least not to Ritsuka. She wasn’t as certain when it came to Tituba and Abigail, who were both names she recalled from her research on Salem before they set out.

“Wait—oh, never mind—” came Lord El-Melloi’s voice from within. “She might as well. I don’t _actually_ need her.”

_Of course you don’t_, thought Kaiya bitterly, and stepped out of the doorway to allow Arjuna to follow her.

“We’ll meet up in the village square in the afternoon, all right?” called Ritsuka, that note of manic cheer back in her voice again. Kaiya waved acknowledgement without looking back, and stalked down the path away from the large house.

Arjuna ghosted along behind her. “You barely touched your porridge, my light.”

“It takes days to starve, you know,” she muttered. 

“Ah, yes, I can see you tell yourself that often. Where are we going?” His hand brushed the small of her back.

Kaiya swallowed down her bad mood, swallowed her desire to stop and let Arjuna take over, and tried to focus. She’d worked in tech support for far longer than she’d been a Chaldean Master. This place felt like a piece of software that was running _wrong_. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t know how to reboot everything either. Other means of diagnosis would be required.

“Where the people are, first. And then… when the sun is higher, the forest again.”

“Very good, Master. I will be behind you.”

And he insisted on being behind her, too, even though she’d thought they’d finally moved past that the day before. At first, it confused and irritated her, but as they moved through the village she realized that in terms of fitting in, he had the right of it. Everybody assumed he was her ordinary servant—or her slave. They looked at him like he was an accessory, before smiling at or greeting her. 

She visited the few shops in the center of town before making her way to the wharf she was pretty sure wasn’t in historical Salem. There was a large and boisterous tavern at the waterfront, which she decided to avoid as soon as she heard Robin Hood’s raised voice from within. Instead, she widened the circuit of her wanderings, walking along rough roads around the farms at the edge of the village.

“Whatever’s going on here, they haven’t made it any easier on the inhabitants,” she commented eventually to Arjuna. “The farms really seem to be suffering, and those shopkeepers were so excited at the idea that I might buy something that I can’t imagine anyone has very much money.”

“They’re very frightened of Indians, too,” said the demon behind her. 

She glanced back at him. “Different Indians, though.”

“My light, do you really think they can tell the difference?” Once again he touched her back. “Do not worry. My presence only adds to your stature, as it should.” Then his hand twisted in her dress, pulling her to a halt. “A moment.”

She stopped and then heard the raised voices in the distance. Peering down a side lane, she saw two solid-looking farmers arguing, with a withered woman in a dark dress and an apron looking on in apparent horror. Instinctively, Kaiya stepped in that direction, only to be hauled back against Arjuna’s chest.

“No, no. We will watch only. So much easier to see the truth from outside.”

One of the farmers waved his hands in the air, his voice getting louder. The other seemed to be trying to calm him down, but was barely calmer himself. The woman backed away.

“He is shouting about his cow,” said the demon pleasantly, with his better hearing. “He believes a black devil has dried its milk.” Arjuna cocked his head. “And he believes the black devil has been consorting with the woman. How… fascinating.” His hands slid from Kaiya’s back to her hips.

Suddenly the woman said something, and pointed down the lane at Kaiya and Arjuna. The two men swung around to look. Then the cow-owner started shouting incoherently, while his companion began to stalk down the lane, looking angry.

“What do you think, my light?” said the demon into her ear. “Shall I kill them? Or shall we continue our stroll?”

A leaden weight in her stomach, Kaiya said, “Let’s keep walking. Hands off! We’re just here as performers, remember?”

Somewhat to her surprise, Arjuna lifted his hands from her hips and she started walking swiftly the direction they’d been going before, hoping the farmer wouldn’t actually chase them down. After a few moments, she risked a look back, and saw nobody except Arjuna on the road or lanes. The three people had vanished so utterly it was like she’d imagined them.

“Did you…?” she asked Arjuna.

He raised his eyebrows and followed her gaze. “No, I did nothing. I have no idea what’s become of them. I could return and look…?”

“Absolutely not!” She returned to her swift walk. Her feet and legs were starting to ache from the sustained effort as they passed through a small and smelly cluster of houses, where hides were tanned and many, many chickens pecked the dust in a large wire pen. 

Several women were huddled around a smaller figure, who was sobbing as one of the women berated her about the chickens and their lack of eggs. They all stopped talking as Kaiya approached and one of them muttered about _them actors_. The child’s sobbing sounded heartbroken and Kaiya had a hunch it was one of the little girls from the night before. 

Once again, she slowed, and once again, Arjuna’s hands slid against her back to keep her moving. She heard the hissing intake of breath from the women and then with a slapping sound, the child’s sobs were muffled while the women started whispering to each other.

Kaiya’s shoulders hunched as she obeyed the pressure from Arjuna’s fingers. Her head low, she kept walking. She’d seen nothing that didn’t seem like it would fit in the era this Singularity recreated. Nothing that suggested that 50,000 citizens of the twenty-first century had ever existed in this space. The feeling that there was something terribly wrong lingered—but was that just the feeling of her modern sensibilities being exposed to the society of a past time? 

This place reminded her of a sick animal, staggering, on the verge of death, and attacking itself. But life had been hard in the seventeenth century, especially for colonists. Was it madness, or just life?

They’d almost completed their circuit of the village perimeter. Ahead loomed a house similar in size and outbuildings to the Carter residence: the home of somebody else educated and well-off. Just after they walked past, the front door slammed open and a scuffling sound made Kaiya turn around.

A well-dressed and well-built man with a bald head dragged an equally well-dressed woman out by her hair and threw her to the ground. Then he looked up and down the road. He scowled when he saw Kaiya and Arjuna, looking away until he saw several other Salem residents nearby.

Then he began to berate the woman loudly. “D’ya think I didn’t see you lusting after that red-headed actor in the square, Elizabeth? You wicked woman! I’ve been so good to you, too!” He hauled her up and slapped her, the sound of flesh against flesh echoing off the house behind him.

The woman sobbed, denying the accusation in broken words, and a tired look flickered across the man’s face. “It’s not the first time, Elizabeth, you know it’s not. We’ll pray together about it later, but we’ve got to drive the sin from your body now.” He hit her again, with an exaggerated motion like it was a performance he wanted all to see. But the blood welling from the woman’s mouth was no actor’s trick.

A third time, Arjuna’s arm curled around Kaiya to stop her from throwing herself into the fray. She struggled for a moment until the eyes of the man and the woman both turned to her. Then, the hatred in the face of the woman made her go limp. Her feet touched the ground and she turned away, back toward the Carter residence.

“Let’s go into the woods,” she whispered. “It can’t be any worse than here.”

Once again, Arjuna followed behind her silently as she went past the Carter residence and struck out on the path they’d tramped down the night before. She walked until she reached the blast zone from Arjuna’s attack the night before, and then stared helplessly at the blackened ground and splintered trees. Whatever had been happening here had truly been erased. Even the bodies of the beasts had melted away.

She kept thinking of the scenes she’d witnessed on her perimeter exploration. Arjuna could have done what he’d done here again. She couldn’t decide if she was glad he hadn’t or not.

No, of _course_ she was glad he’d restrained himself. Most likely these people were some of the citizens of modern Salem, with a veil laid over their thoughts and memories. Killing them for being victims of the demon pillar would be a crime.

Arjuna’s hands slid around her hips and suddenly she didn’t want to think about the citizens of Salem anymore. She turned against him, stood on her toes, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him hard.

In response, his light touch engulfed her as he pulled her against him. He kissed her savagely, his hands stroking her back. She bit his lower lip and inhaled his spicy scent. He began gathering up her skirt and she whimpered and panted and encouraged him with little whimpers. She wanted him to take her, here and now, wanted to be exactly what she was, to _prove_ she wasn’t part of this horrible place despite the strange, awful wrongness pressing against her.

Then he let her skirt drop and his kissing took on a more leisurely pace. After a moment, he brought his hands up and began to once again loosen her bodice, spending the time to free her breasts. When the bodice hung loose and open and only her thin chemise hid them from sight, he kissed his way down her throat to her chest. 

Her eyes slitted, she looked over his bent head and saw the unnatural whiteness in the shadow of a tree. Kaiya’s fingers twisted in her hair as she developed a theory as to why he’d slowed down what had promised to be a quick and savage fuck. 

_That demon’s goddamned sense of humor_, Kaiya thought sourly, and pushed him away as she said, “You might as well come out, kid.”

She said it, but she had no expectation that the little white-haired girl from the night before would _obey_ her. And yet she did, edging fully around the tree and staring at them with wide eyes.

Arjuna, meanwhile, accepted his rejection with that demon’s smile, turning as well to face the girl and then crouching down near Kaiya’s feet.

“He… he’s special,” said the pale girl, staring at Arjuna in fascination. “And you were… were…” She waved her hands back and forth in a way that somehow accurately indicated what they’d been about to do.

“We’re actors,” said Kaiya, concentrating hard on the child. It didn’t take much to see she wasn’t quite a part of the Salem they’d observed that morning. Her clothing was styled differently, with a shorter black skirt and a knitted sweater, and she had an aura none of the rest had.

She snorted at Kaiya’s words, too. “Not likely. Liars, though.” The girl stared at Arjuna for another moment. “You were… I’m supposed to… too.”

Kaiya’s moment of curiosity evaporated, replaced by the black mood she’d been working out with Arjuna a few minutes earlier. “Says who?” she demanded.

“My grandfather,” said the girl matter of factly. “Except… maybe not now… I’m not good enough.”

“What’s your name, child?” asked Arjuna, his voice so smooth and sweet that Kaiya wasn’t surprised when the girl jumped and smoothed her skirt.

“Lavinia Whately, sir,” she breathed.

“And what is it your grandfather expects you to do?” 

Kaiya stared down at Arjuna, amazed he hadn’t understood the meaning under the girl’s words.

“Be… be the vessel for… somebody special like you.” Lavinia’s eyes lowered. “Except he doesn’t need that anymore.”

“Why not?” demanded Kaiya.

A look of defiance flashed over Lavinia’s face. “Can’t say.” She studied Kaiya. “But… Miss Liar? I was wondering… are you his? He acts like he’s yours, but that can’t be right, can it?”

“I’m hers,” said Arjuna in a silky voice. “She called me and made me hers.”

Lavinia’s eyes, when she looked back at Kaiya, were filled with a respect bordering an awe. “You… you don’t look like a great magus… but maybe you are?”

Kaiya frowned. “What do you know about magi?” 

Lavinia shrugged and a cunning look passed over her face. “I’m the same as you, that’s all.”

“Why are you telling us that?” Kaiya asked sharply. “That isn’t the kind of thing you share with strangers, even if you think you have something in common with them.”

Lavinia gave her a half-smile. “Won’t matter if you tell folks in Salem about us. They already hate us. But _you’re_ supposedly actors. I could tell everybody about you two and they’d chase you out of town. Or… you could help me.”

“Or I could end you, child,” said Arjuna sweetly. “Do you really hope to control the likes of me with _words_?”

Lavinia’s eyes widened. “But we could help you too! Or I could, anyhow. My grandfather won’t—he’s—there’s…” She fell silent, biting her lip. “Oh, what am I thinking? I _can’t_ trust you!” And with that, she turned and fled into the forest.

Kaiya stared after her as she said absently, “Arjuna? Don’t threaten to kill any more children.”

Arjuna reached up and caught her around the waist, tugging her to the ground as he said, “Ah, you too think you can control me with _words_.” He straddled her hips and finished pulling her bodice off her as she tilted her head, looking in the direction Lavinia had vanished. “Don’t worry, my light. I will tell you if we acquire any more observers.”

“That was so very strange, though,” murmured Kaiya. “She said so much it was like she was… enticing us.”

As Arjuna loosened the lace at the neckline of her shift and pulled it down to fully expose her breasts to the cool spring air, he said, “She did a poor job of it.” 

He bent and took one of her breasts in his warm mouth, sweeping his tongue over her nipple until she gasped and arched her back. Then he released her and said smugly, “This filthy village is full of wickedness, my light, and that child was a part of it. If I were to use Pashupata here, it would be a blessing for those who remain innocent.”

Kaiya scowled and pushed at him as he bent for her other breast. “You’re more wicked than any of them, because you _enjoy_ it.”

He caught her hands and pressed them beside her head as he teased her nipple. Little jolts of pleasure trembled through her and she squirmed under him, panting, “I hate you.”

“And oh, you sounded like you did earlier,” he murmured against her soft skin. “You said, _Oh, Arjuna, please, yes, like that…_ and now that I carry out your will, you hate me?” He freed her wrists to instead massage her breasts as he kissed her neck. The heat of his hands danced through her body as he circled her nipples with his thumbs.

She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled. He nipped at her neck, licked his way up to her ear and bit her there, too. “I did lie to her. You’re mine, of course. Mine, mine, mine, my delicate, sensitive Master.” With each repetition, he bit her again.

Kaiya scratched at his clothed back and his clothes melted away, leaving his skin bare for her to rake. She dug her nails in and he squeezed her breasts harder, even as he whispered stifling sweetness in her ear. Then he kissed her mouth again, his tongue dominating hers, in turns soft and hard. 

Already emotionally worn from the day, she realized she wanted to lose herself in what he was doing to her, to let him bend her to his will. She shifted under him, softening her body in surrender.

“Ah, but the way they looked at what was mine, my light,” he said as he broke away. “I think I _will_ end up killing them all by the end.”

Her temper flared once more and Kaiya growled, jerking herself up toward him, angry he was still talking about the awful villagers and his own demonic urges rather than taking what she offered him.

He captured her mouth again and then pulled her head back by her hair, baring her neck to him. Licking her throat, he dragged his tongue down to the hollow and kissed the bones there. “I dislike them, yes. Even my noble brother would dislike them, which troubles me to no end.”

Irritation surged through Kaiya, before the extent of Arjuna’s words filtered through her hazed mind. She realized that in his own way he was as bothered by their tour of Salem as she had been.

“Monster,” she murmured, running her fingers down his chest and abdomen. “Demon in a prince’s skin.”

He lifted his head so she could see his eyes. Something dark and possessive flared within them. “Your devil.” He sounded satisfied as he added, “Using your own lusts against you, tempting you into greater sin. Tsk, tsk.”

“You don’t hate me,” she whispered, inching her hands lower as she remembered him telling her to make him hate her more, right before he’d fucked her the first time.

His teeth flashed. “You’re far too adorable to hate. Sweet, delicate, vulnerable.” With a twitch of his hips and a slow thrust, his cock gradually slid into her. “Mine to defile.”

Kaiya inhaled slowly as he filled her, closing her eyes again as _sensation_ that tasted of a dream quivered through her. It felt like they’d fused together, like his movement changed her own parameters.

“So precious, so cherished, but they’ll never have you like this,” he whispered in her ear. “Never feast on your moans, never sink into your heat.” He rocked back and forth, remaining mostly sheathed within her and using his weight to send bursts of pleasure blossoming through her. 

Eventually she wasn’t sure if he’d stopped talking or she’d stopped being able to process his words. All she was aware of was his warmth and how he stretched her core as he rocked against that node of pleasure. And when the blooms of ecstasy merged into each other and she started to gasp and whine, he moved faster, faster, withdrawing and shoving into her again as he took his own pleasure.

As her orgasm swept over her, she clutched at him, riding the wave of bliss and drifting on the heights. A stray thought crossed her semi-conscious mind: that he _had_ wanted to hate her, in the beginning. _Was it worse that he didn’t?_

Then the thought vanished as he bit her shoulder and shuddered in his own orgasm. She squirmed against him and bit back a howl until he kissed her again.

Slowly, slowly, they both came down together. He lay draped over her, apparently content not to move until she insisted. As her mind cleared of the sexual haze, it also cleared of her immediate distress at what she’d seen in Salem. Without pushing Arjuna away, she looked at what she could see of the blasted clearing in the fading light of the afternoon.

Now that she was able to focus—skirts around her hips, her lover still between her legs—she realized that the clearing was on the _edge_ of something. The edge of the spiritual entity that made up Salem, perhaps. They’d arrived beyond that boundary and walked in.

It wasn’t much, but it was information that left her with new questions. Why had Abigail picked that location for her little play ritual? What did the boundary mean? Why had Lavinia returned to the location?

She shifted against Arjuna’s weight, but he didn’t respond. Sharply, she said, “Are you asleep?”

“Mmm,” he said lazily. “Dozing, perhaps. The weakening pressure of this place is draining.”

Shoving at him, she said, “Maybe next time try sleeping at night like the other Servants!”

He lifted himself from her. “How could I, without you beneath me? Ah, I know. Defy our host and join me this evening.”

Kaiya hesitated, thinking of Carter. “I want to stay in the same building as Ritsuka for now.”

Arjuna rose to his knees, his eyes narrowing. “Ritsuka, Ritsuka. I already told you that you will not die for her, my light. Don’t test me on this.”

She would, maybe, someday. But not today. “Even if I don’t soak an arrow for her, I seem to have the best magic senses of our entire group now. It isn’t worth jeopardizing lines of communication and our welcome from Carter just so _you_ can use me as furniture.” Rising to her feet, she brushed herself off and tried hopelessly to smooth down her hair.

Arjuna rematerialized his own spotless clothing and took over finger combing her hair. “The afternoon dies. I believe we have missed the appointed hour to meet Ritsuka and her Servants.”

She noticed how smug he sounded about that, but let it pass. “Then we’ll go back to the Carter residence for now. I want to talk to Abby anyhow.”

The house was very quiet and still as they approached from the forest side, so still that Kaiya instantly knew the entire troupe was still in town—or somewhere worse. She indulged in a brief moment of panic before Abby came around the corner from the front, spotted them and picked up her previously sedate pace.

“I’m not supposed to talk to the guests,” she said shyly, her eyes darting between Kaiya and Arjuna before lowering. “But I’m sure you’re wondering where your friends are?”

“I won’t tell anybody,” said Kaiya. “And I am, very much. I’m a little worried I’m going to get in trouble.”

“Oh, I hope not!” burst out Abby. “They went to do a trial performance for the town elders, in order to earn permission to perform for everybody else. I wanted to go see it, but I’m being punished.” She kicked at the ground. “Will the performance be alright without you?”

Kaiya swallowed a bitter feeling that didn’t even make sense. “Yes. We’re not on the stage ourselves.”

“Oh,” said Abby, brightening. “Maybe you could tell me stories of some of your adventures, instead? I love hearing about faraway places.”

“Have you ever left Salem?” asked Arjuna, while Kaiya struggled with the idea that she’d ever had any adventures worthy of telling a child.

Abby gave him a nervous look. “N..no. My uncle goes to Boston sometimes, but I’m not allowed to leave Salem. That’s why I like hearing stories so much. My uncle tells me some and then I tell Lavinia, but I think she’s gotten tired of my stories lately because she won’t come see me anymore.”

_Ah,_ thought Kaiya. _Two questions answered, and more unlocked._ Casually, she said, “I met a girl named Lavinia last night before we met you.”

“What? She _came_? Oh my goodness!” Abby bounced on her toes before a frown creased her brow. “Maybe I shouldn’t have invited the other girls, then. But I thought Lavinia didn’t like me anymore.” She gnawed on a knuckle, her gaze dropping again. To herself, she said, “Oh no. I think I have to apologize to her. And Tituba’s in trouble too. I really messed up.”

Footsteps marched up the front walk of the house and somebody knocked on the door. Kaiya moved past the distracted Abby and peeked around the corner of the house. Several men in what might have been uniforms stood importantly on the stoop, with several other men in more ordinary garb stood with them uneasily.

Tituba opened the door, and the lead man said, “Tituba. You’ll be coming with us now for questioning.”

“Sir?” said Tituba in confusion.

“We found the wicked little doll you used against the children of Salem, Tituba!”

Suddenly Abby scrambled past Kaiya, calling, “No, no! Tituba didn’t give it to anyone! Anne _stole_ that doll from Tituba!” She sounded genuinely outraged.

“Abigail Williams!” said one of the farmers. “You’re in enough trouble. You stay out of this.”

“Miss Abby,” began Tituba, before the officer in charge put a heavy hand on his shoulder. Abby started crying, as Tituba tried to calm her through her own rising fear. Whatever odd and possibly magical lies were contained within the woman’s person, her concern for Abigail was clearly genuine.

Kaiya’s arms and legs felt far away as she too stepped around the house, Arjuna at her back. She retained just enough situational awareness to glance back at him, to notice he remained unarmed, and to see his expressionless mask slide into place.

She turned back to the officers and asked casually. “What’s going on?” 

“Pfah, one of the performers,” said the farmer.

The officer gave Kaiya a look so haughty she worried he was going to set Arjuna off. “None of your business, woman. Why are you apart from your troupe? Your reputation is already perilous in Salem. You’d best not be—”

The other farmer whispered something to the officer and his expression solidified. Very stiffly, he said, “Oh.” Then he pointedly turned back to Tituba. “Come along, Tituba.”

“Miss Kaiya,” said Tituba, in a broken little voice. “Take care of Miss Abby until I get back?”

Abigail stomped her foot. “No! This isn’t right! And you can’t take her! You’re not allowed!”

Kaiya noticed how Tituba flinched, closing her eyes as if expecting a blow. Suddenly the sense of _power_—and not Arjuna’s power—rippled through the air. Everything seemed to twist around her. 

_Her mother’s voice whispered in her memories, teaching her the fundamentals of magecraft. “We start with being where we are.”_

She felt the ground under her feet and the Command Seals writhing on her hand, knew something was wrong, and then _lost_ her understanding of it.

But Abigail was upset. She could do something about that.

Placing her hand on Abigail’s hair, Kaiya said, “That’s true, isn’t it? Let’s go find your uncle. He should have some say in this.”

Looking up at her, Abigail’s eyes widened as her pupils dilated. “Yes, yes. This is important. Uncle won’t be angry at me for telling him about this!”

She hadn’t thought it was possible for the chief officer to get even stiffer but somehow it happened. “Very good. I must notify him of what his servant is accused of in any case.”

Kaiya’s head whirled as the little parade walked down the road into the center of town. She felt like she suddenly had too many variables to track and not enough information to understand how they all linked together. Her breathing quickened as she tried, until Abigail gave her an anxious glance.

Then she remembered that she’d arrived with Lord El-Melloi II, who understood the theories of magic like few others, and forced herself to calm down. When they came to the town hall, it looked like the trial performance was still in progress. But when she and Abigail looked in the door, they saw many villagers standing around an exultant Ritsuka, praising the play.

Lord El-Melloi, leaning against the back wall, saw Kaiya immediately. He saw Abigail, too, and called, “Mr. Carter…” before joining them at the entrance. “What is going on?”

“Too much,” said Kaiya breathlessly.

“Uncle! Uncle!” called Abigail, and this time she was uncowed by his frown of disapproval as he too joined them. “They took Tituba!” She pointed out the door.

“What?!” said Randolph Carter and immediately hurried out. 

Kaiya let Abigail dash after him, but pulled Lord El-Melloi to where he could get a view on the exterior proceedings as well. Arjuna leaned against the wall just outside.

Very quickly and quietly, Kaiya began to explain to Lord El-Melloi what she’d detected about the boundary region, about Tituba’s odd not-exactly-lies, about some of the strange elements she’d noticed in Abigail, and most of all, about Lavinia. As she did so, Ritsuka and a few other members of the troupe joined Carter and Ritsuka earnestly got involved with the growing argument.

“Miss Hisau,” said Lord El-Melloi tersely. “Please do not get distracted.”

Kaiya dragged her gaze away from Ritsuka and back to the magecraft scholar. Pleadingly, she said, “Surely you’ve been able to detect some of this?”

Lord El-Melloi grimaced. “Perhaps under normal circumstances. However, the pressure limiting Servant strength does no favors for the shoddy magic circuits of my host. But as long as yours are functioning properly, it should make no difference.”

Shrugging uneasily, Kaiya said, “This place is bad. I don’t know exactly how it’s different from the original Salem, but there’s something… under the surface.”

“Our enemy, presumably,” said Lord El-Melloi dryly. Then he looked over Kaiya’s head and said, “And what’s this approaching?”

As Kaiya turned to look, she flinched as an ethereal blade sliced through her mind. For a moment, the night was darker, darker, and lightning played at the edges of her vision. Then she felt the scratch of Arjuna’s sharp edges against her thoughts and the darkness coalesced into a well-dressed bearded man approaching from the direction of the wharf.

“The doll is a tool used by hexing,” he announced as he stopped at the group around Tituba. “That woman is under arrest for heresy. Good evening. I am Matthew Hopkins, and as of now I will be regulating the extermination of heresy in Salem.”

****

_“Not yet,” Ritsuka said, flinging a hand back to stop Kaiya mid-step. “We’re going to try to solve this without anybody getting hurt.” _

She’d said that, and all through the long, cold night, Kaiya had marveled that Ritsuka had apparently _believed_ it, too. Not that it might not yet be solved without further violence--it might--but all that her confidence also implied: that nobody had _yet_ been hurt. That Kaiya hadn’t walked away from one beating, maybe two. That Abby wasn’t haunted by secrets she couldn’t share. That Tituba wasn’t suffering under arrest.

Kaiya marveled and yet she didn’t. Ritsuka was hope in a dead world. She _believed_ in the impossible. And sometimes by believing in it, she gave it a path to reality. Chaldea had contracted with multiple Servants who wouldn’t have existed outside their Singularity save for the path Ritsuka made. Kaiya’s sparring partner Yan Qing was one of them.

But that belief couldn’t change the past. It couldn’t dwell on what had already happened. That was for Kaiya to do instead.

As a result of instructions from Mash and Ritsuka, she spent the next morning resentfully tramping through the forest with Arjuna and Lord El-Melloi, serving as a sort of living spectacles for the Caster so he could develop theories about the magic underlying the field suppressing the Servant’s power. As the morning wore on, she felt more and more that she was being tested and judged, like El-Melloi didn’t believe her, like she was imagining things.

He didn’t _act_ like he was patronizing her or doubting her, but somehow that made it worse, not better, when he rubbed the bridge of his nose and admitted he felt like he was missing something. Then he hauled her back to the Carter residence midday because he knew she “wouldn’t want to miss another team meeting.” _Technically_ true but she was eager to try to do something more useful and after all, what did they have to report?

About as much as everybody else, it turned out. Ritsuka, David and Shakespeare had attended Carter into town to talk to the officials about Tituba, while Robin, Hector and Mata Hari had further investigated the Whateley land, based on intelligence both David and Kaiya had gathered the day before. Meanwhile, Mash had remained with Abby, who would have otherwise been left alone in the large house. While she was certainly old enough for that to normally be reasonable, both Mash and Ritsuka had felt bad for the isolated kid.

And what had they discovered? The Whateley team had found a mage’s workshop under the Whateley home—but not one they’d dared penetrate into without explicit approval, given the aggressive protections magi could place. Ritsuka and her companions had watched a powerful legal defense mounted by Carter in favor of releasing _‘his property’_ back to him—but the defense had been toppled by Matthew Hopkins’ government papers giving him absolute authority over the investigation of any heresy in Salem.

Only two positive steps had come from the morning’s effort: David had won the approval of some of the town elders through the peacefulness of his harp playing, while Ritsuka had arranged for a meeting with Matthew Hopkins that afternoon.

“So this afternoon, Lord El-Melloi and Kaiya should go to the Whateley house while—”

Kaiya blurted, “I’d rather go see Tituba, if they’ll let us in. She and Matthew Hopkins are both… like shadows under water to me. I wouldn’t be any help at trying to break into a mage’s Workshop, even with my circuits, but if I can see them again, maybe I can understand.”

Ritsuka blinked and then gave Kaiya a dazzling smile. “Sure, you can come with me. If we can get you in to see Tituba, I’m sure you’d be able to help her feel better. That would make Abby feel better, too.”

Kaiya and Arjuna went with Ritsuka to the town square after a midday meal prepared by Robin Hood. Once again they left Mash with Abby but also left Robin cleaning after his cookery, while Hector, Mata Hari and Lord El-Melloi were dispatched back to the Whateley land. 

Matthew Hopkins met them outside the underground gaol where Tituba was being kept, along with the town militia members he’d co-opted. The bright sunshine of the spring morning faded when he approached, but no cloud marred the sky. Kaiya put a hand to her forehead, but changing the contrast didn’t help. There was something unreal about Hopkins, like he was a finger puppet on a giant, nearly-invisible hand.

“—and thus, I entreat you, let Tituba be returned to her master so that once again Salem may meditate on higher things. You arrived too late last night to appreciate our treatise on Solomon—”

“I will not change my mind about this, Mr…. Shakespeare, was it?” The witch finder gave the playwright a flat look. “I can’t say I approve of your bad taste in choice of a stage name, man. You could hardly compare to the real Shakespeare. But I suppose it helps you take advantage of hard-working, serious people like the citizens of Salem.”

Kaiya had never seen Shakespeare taken aback before. For a moment he looked like he’d swallowed his pen.

Ritsuka darted into the opening, turning the full force of her persuasive charm on Hopkins. While she lacked Mata Hari’s supernatural ability to earn trust, she made up for it by being forceful in a way Mata Hari’s own power prevented her from being. She was so compelling that it took a moment before Kaiya realized that the other Master was still arguing for Tituba to be freed.

Her anxiety grew—this wasn’t what they’d discussed, and the witch finder was clearly growing more impatient with making repeated refusals. Finally, Kaiya cut in with, “If you won’t release her, at least allow me to see her? I looked down there earlier and it’s cold and awful. You’d be better able to discover the truth if she wasn’t desperate.”

Hopkins’ gaze flicked to her. “Is that so? She has yet to be tried. Would you comfort a guilty woman?”

Kaiya stared at him in astonishment. “Yes! Surely you know that’s the right thing to do?”

The pale eyes of the witch finder focused sharply on her, before his gaze moved over her shoulder to where Arjuna always stood. “Ah. You. I’ve heard about you as well.” He glanced at Shakespeare. “This woman and her servant are members of your troupe?” As Shakespeare, still apparently shocked, agreed with this, Hopkins said, “Hm. Well, you will be observed and we will see what the woman has to say. Soldiers—”

“You _fool_,” hissed Robin Hood’s disembodied voice near Kaiya. They’d left him at the Carter residence but he’d joined them after all, wrapped in his cloak of stealth.

“—arrest the black-haired woman—”

“Kaiya, _run_!” Robin whispered.

“—and her servant—”

All the hair on Kaiya’s arms stood on end as she finally realized that the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins was arresting _her_ as a heretical witch too.

“_So be careful, my light. I will burn the entire Singularity before I let you die.”_

She felt an almost joyful draw of power from Arjuna, like a vast inhale before a song, and all she could think was that she’d made everything worse—

—and if she didn’t do something, it would get _even worse_ as once again Arjuna took matters into his own grasp.

The invisible hands of Robin Hood grabbed Kaiya by the arm and flung her hard away from Hopkins and his moving soldiers. She stumbled past Arjuna with his unholy smile, and then caught her stride and _ran, _believing with all her heart that Arjuna would follow her instead of striking the witchfinder dead.

Once she had her bearings, she headed by the most direct path to the nearest edge of the forest. Shouts rose behind her, including from Ritsuka, but she didn’t stop pounding her feet against the forest floor. She aimed for the boundary she’d spent all morning sensing but not finding, hoping that in this moment of distress, what had failed her before would now work.

Arjuna ran behind her, moving swiftly, without any evidence of her own degree of effort. Only when she came to a rocky slope that ended abruptly in a sheer stone face did she finally stop running and bend to catch her breath, her hands on her knees.

“Tricky Master,” said Arjuna conversationally as he stopped beside her. “And here I’d prepared for you to once again seek war.”

Panting, Kaiya said, “Citizens of Salem. Prison can be healed from. Dead usually can’t be.”

“Do you really think _he_ is from modern Salem?” asked Arjuna in clear skepticism.

“Doesn’t matter if the soldiers all are, does it?” She dropped to her knees on the forest floor and reached out for a twisted and withered fallen leaf. After inspecting it, she dropped it and found another, looking at it from several angles before she said, “Give me your knife for a moment.”

Arjuna crouched down next to her, frowning. “Why?”

She gave him an exasperated look even as she appreciated the statue-like beauty of his frown. “So I can use my blood to make some familiars. I want to know what’s going on. I’m not as good as my mother, but I can at least do this.” When he just stared at her broodingly, she sighed and held out her hand. “Just prick my third finger.”

Still frowning, he took her hand and inspected it closely.

“Do you want me to _gnaw_ myself?” she demanded, her voice suddenly shaking. “Stab myself on a sharp stick? That’ll hurt more but I already _ran away_; let me find out what I’ve left behind, Arjuna!”

His mouth twisting, he brought out his white knife and sliced open the tip of her finger. She picked up first one leaf and then the other, dripping her blood onto them while muttering the nonsense rhyme she’d learned from her mother and pushing her will through the words.

After several moments, both leaves began to twitch and move even as they whitened. Another moment later and two white moths fluttered before her before flitting away toward the village.

“There we go,” she mumbled. “They’re not fast but they’ll get there and then I can see what’s going on.”

Arjuna sat against the cliff face and pulled her into his lap. “You didn’t sleep last night. You should have come to me after all.” His voice was cold with disapproval. “Rest a little now.”

“I’m fine,” Kaiya muttered, but leaned her head against his shoulder rather than struggling. Her body remained as stiff as a board though.

He stroked her hair and back. “You’re alive. It is not the same, my light. Rest, close your eyes, or I will believe you led me to the woods for different reasons.”

Kaiya closed her eyes, her body softening against the rhythm of his hand. When his long fingers curled around her neck and stroked along her shoulders, she melted into semi-consciousness.

***

A white moth, barely visible in the afternoon sunlight, drifted on the breeze around Ritsuka and her Servants as they sorted out costumes in front of the Carter barn under the suspicious gaze of one of the town milita.

“I don’t care what Shakespeare says, this is weird,” said Robin Hood quietly. “Making us put on a play to prove we’re not _heretics_ like Kaiya is weird.”

“You’d rather we were all arrested?” asked Lord El-Melloi testily and then dodged Mash as she came at him with a kingly outfit. “I came along on the strict understanding nobody would try to put me on a stage and—”

“Oh, leave him,” said Robin crossly. “I’ll do it.”

“My colleague was wise to provide us with a play so fitting Hopkins’ desires,” said Shakespeare. “Though I anticipate he will be surprised all the same by _The Three Jeannes.”_

Hector, holding his arms out as Mata Hari pinned a costume to him, said, “As would Miss Jeanne Alter. I think we ought to all swear a pact to never speak of this to her.”

Ritsuka, smoothing a piece of fake armor, said distractedly, “Mash, do you think Kaiya’s all right?”

Robin Hood gave Ritsuka a disgusted look. “C’mon. Of course she’s all right. The sun’s still in the sky, yeah? We’d know if something happened. Archers don’t just _evaporate_ as soon as their Masters are down.”

With a shiver, Ritsuka said, “But what if _he_ did something to her?”

Robin hesitated. “She’s got her Command Seals.”

“Don’t worry about this, Master,” said David, strumming his harp lightly. He sat closest to the militia guard. “Kaiya did what she had to, and now we do what we have to as well.” He raised his head to look at the white moth fluttering nearby. “We should have a little time to sort this out.”

After more preparation and some extremely unfocused rehearsal, the troupe moved to the town hall again, where the village was already gathering in anticipation of the play. The white moths followed along. One of them managed to make it inside the town hall to float among the rafters. The other flitted through the village, listening to the occasional murmurs of villagers. But most of the adults of the town had attended the play.

That made it all the more notable when a cluster of men entered the gaol in the fading twilight. Twenty minutes later they emerged once more, surrounding a hooded figure.

_This was bad._

Kaiya tried to awaken herself from the familiar trance, but the warmth of Arjuna’s arms around her made it harder for her to snap awake as she usually could. Nothing could hurt her like this, after all. Arjuna would protect her.

Matthew Hopkins, his men, and his prisoner all moved through the darkened village and the white moth struggled to follow along. But the blood-powered familiar only had so much strength and the men outpaced it. It wasn’t until they vanished over a low hill near the sea that Kaiya finally managed to pull herself from the trance. The last thing she saw before she opened her eyes was a gallows.

With a cry, she tried to wrench herself away from Arjuna and failed as his arms tightened around her. Panic exploded through her body, followed by a burst of light as she fought back instinctively against Arjuna’s embrace. She scratched his face, kicked at his stomach, and writhed wildly. 

His hold on her tightened painfully and then his mouth was on hers. She bit him savagely, shoving at him, but her struggles only seemed to inflame him. He pinned her to the ground.

Kaiya’s mind wasn’t functioning right. The gallows, the _gallows_, it was _very_ _bad_. Something was happening that shouldn’t be happening.

But Arjuna moved against her, his mouth invading hers, and she remembered him promising her that she could lay all responsibility on him. Even in her panic, he felt _good_ against her. He would take her and drain the edge off her emotions and she’d be able to think again—

He was kissing her with a frantic savagery that only slowed as she stilled. A thought flickered like lightning across her mind: that he had simply _reacted_ as she’d panicked. Then he moved his mouth up her face, licked a tear from her cheek and lifted his head to look down at her, his eyes wide and his pupils constricted.

“Please,” Kaiya croaked through a dry throat. “They took Tituba… let me go!”

For a long moment, he didn’t move, staring down at her as his eyes slowly narrowed. 

“Please,” she repeated. “They took her to the gallows, Arjuna!”

He rolled off her and yanked her to her feet. As soon as his weight lifted from her, the panic rose again and she stumbled away from him, scrambling through the woods toward the sea. The Command Seals on her hand burned, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to come up with the right command. All she could do was try to get there and do whatever she had to—if she surrendered herself, would they stop? Would they listen?

Branches thwacked her face as she ran through the dark forest, but she couldn’t stop. She kept seeing the hooded figure that had been Tituba, stumbling between the larger figures, kept hearing Tituba ask her to care for Abby. Whatever magic afflicted the woman, she was a kind soul, as Romani had been kind—

Her vision blurring, Kaiya careened off a tree. Arjuna caught her as she tumbled forward and swung her into his arms. His dark eyes flashed as he turned his head and his path, carrying her toward something he could see far better than her.

They emerged from the forest onto the Salem Commons, and ran across the grassland to a distant square shape silhouetted against the cloudy night sky. For a moment, everything seemed dreamlike to Kaiya. She was distantly aware through her other familiar of _The Three Jeannes_ reaching its climax. The moonlight through the clouds made everything pale and strange. Arjuna ran silently and so smoothly she almost felt like she was floating.

The snap of a trapdoor and the muffled grunt of breath leaving flesh broke the silence like a scream. Kaiya moaned, clutching at Arjuna. Only a few heartbeats later, he knelt down, letting her slip from his arms as he looked at the gallows. A body dangled as the figures of Matthew Hopkins and his men moved around it, murmuring.

Kaiya stared at Tituba’s waif-like form. One of the men cut the rope and she vanished bonelessly through the trap into the space underneath.

How had this happened? They should have had _time_. There should have been a proper trial—

Was it because Kaiya had run away? _How could it be_ that Tituba had been hung, and while Kaiya had slept in the forest? She should have done something. She should have been there.

“My light,” said the demon in his sweetest voice. “Command me, I beg you.”

Darkness flickered across Kaya’s vision, a darkness streaked with red. The whole world seemed to stutter.

Matthew Hopkins looked in her direction. A wave crashed against the shore beyond the gallows and then Matthew Hopkins and his men vanished. Had they run away, or simply disappeared? Kaiya couldn’t tell. She’d been seeing things the last twenty four hours that nobody else could see when it came to Matthew Hopkins, Tituba, and the Singularity itself.

Hopkins thought she was a witch, and so she was. Dizzily, she wondered if she was exactly what they were afraid of: not just a magic-worker, but a threat to all that was good in humanity. A corruption, a source of evil.

She didn’t know. But she could unleash Arjuna. He’d asked her to. He could release his Noble Phantasm and the likes of Matthew Hopkins and his gallows squad would be obliterated. Perhaps most of Salem would, too.

Kaiya thought of what she’d seen while walking, thought of Ritsuka and her foolish dreams of peace and friendship. Ritsuka would forgive anything, anyone, even Kaiya.

“Kaiya,” whispered Arjuna. He stood in front of her. “I can’t kill them until you come back, my light. And I’ll enjoy it, oh yes. But you can’t tell me that makes me more wicked than them. Murder without pleasure is surely the greater sin, is it not?”

She barely heard him through the red and black rage streaking across her mind. She felt like all she had was a hammer and suddenly everything looked like a nail.

Inhaling, she opened her mouth to say—_something_. She didn’t know what. Something she’d want to die for later, and something that would feel so good right now. Something so wrong and so right, like Arjuna holding her against a wall as he bent her to his desire.

Then, all at once, everything stopped: the brush of the wind, the movement of the sea. Arjuna’s voice stopped, too, and then he vanished completely. The only thing left in the world was Kaiya, an expanse of grass, and a gallows.

She blinked, shock and bewilderment chasing the rage from her mind. “Arjuna?” 

No answer.

“_Arjuna?!_” she shouted.

The only response was a clattering from the gallows. The trap door had closed again, but something was bumping at it from below.

Kaiya felt herself pulled across the still grass like she was floating, drawn inexorably closer to the gallows. As she approached, the bumping underneath the trapdoor grew more forceful, until it finally burst open. The trap door, which should have opened down, flew up.

A dark head looked over the edge and then climbed out with jerky, inhuman movements, like a puppet with its strings tangled. The tattooed figure glanced at her and smiled, before leaning down into the pit under the gallows again.

Kaiya chewed on a knuckle, staring at the figure. He looked familiar. She _knew_ him. She’d seen him before.

At Chaldea?

Yes, at Chaldea, although not often. He kept to himself, talked to himself, and almost never went on missions.

A moment later, Angra Mainyu lifted Tituba’s body from below the gallows, hopped down and laid her in the grass.

“You can’t end this yet,” he said conversationally, as he inspected Tituba’s body. Carefully, he adjusted the bend of her neck, and then glanced up at Kaiya. Only then did she realize he’d been talking to her.

“What… what are you doing here?” she asked numbly.

He gave her another devilish smile. “Everybody’s looking for somebody to blame. The land called me. It’s just like old times.”

“Shouldn’t I end it, then? Why are we playing this game?” she demanded, in a rush of emotion.

Angra shook his head and bent over Tituba again. “If it ends too early, Abigail brings the tree of pain. That’s what we’re here to stop. He keeps failing, though.” He looked up again. “We’re running out of second chances.”

Kaiya had no idea what to say. She watched as Angra began to lightly pat Tituba’s face, although the woman seemed very definitely dead.

“Come on, you. Your part’s over this time. Time to wake up and get off stage properly, Miss.”

“What is going on?” Kaiya whispered. 

Instead of answering her, Angra said, “Wakey wakey. Come on, stop playing possum.”

And Tituba opened eyes that glowed white, gasping for breath. Angra sat back on his heels, looking satisfied.

Kaiya repeated, “What’s _going on_?” 

“We’re not alone,” said Angra. “Not here. Not anywhere, really. But especially not here. He made this place to trap the other one. To trap Abby. But the other one’s the worst of Salem, and now we’re all trapped here together.”

Tituba sat, stood, and then, shedding white radiance, turned to look at Kaiya.

“Take care of Miss Abby,” said the woman, who was Tituba no longer. “We’ll need her in the end. The wizard was right about that, at least.”

“_What is going on?!”_ wailed Kaiya. But Angra Mainyu only stood up and waggled his fingers at her in a gesture of farewell.

And then everything was as it had been before. She stood further from the gallows, with Arjuna directly in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. The wind blew and the surf crashed. The trap door was open as it had been when Tituba’s body fell underneath. She was _certain_ the corpse was still there too.

She focused on her Servant, dazed now instead of enraged. What had she just seen? Had it been real? A hallucination or a trick? Nothing made sense anymore. 

_Not yet. You can’t end this yet._

_We’ll need her in the end._

Nothing made sense, not even sending out Arjuna as the instrument of justice.

Kaiya sighed and leaned her head against him for a moment. Then, as she heard worried voices approaching from the village, she said, “Let’s go recover Tituba’s body. Abby doesn’t need to see her like this.”

Arjuna’s arms closed around her—but only for a moment. Then he released her and turned to walk beside her to the gallows, to do what she’d decided had to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Salem is different from canon in more than just the casting. I'm hoping to get through it in two more chapters, but sometimes these things streeeetch. I'll be alternating them with [The Star and the Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20963096), which has also erupted in Plot back in Chaldea.


End file.
